The Second Master of Wind
by GeekyGirl183
Summary: (Takes place after Season 5, with an epilogue from The Day of the Departed movie) The ninjas face an old slithery enemy when he returns to claim what was thought to be lost in a previous battle from a mysterious new individual who seems familiar to the ninja team, but is not who they think they are. I only own my OC's Aeria and Xia, I DO NOT own Lego Ninjago Masters of Spinjitzu
1. OC File- Aeria Wiater

General

Fandom: Lego Ninjago Masters of Spinjitzu

Full (Inherited) Name: Aeria Wiater

Name Meaning: "Angel of the Wind"

Reason for name: Was born to the Master of Wind along with her brother

Nickname: Ari, Ri, Riri

Adopted Name: Violet Lynn

Code Name: The Violet Ninja

Age: However old the other ninja are

Gender: Female

Race: Lego human

Appearance

Skin color: Yellow

Height: Slightly shorter than Lloyd

Hairstyle: Mid-length with bangs

Hair color: Black with a streak of purple

Eye color: Black

Distinguishing Features: Right eye has a scar over it

Preferred Clothing: Black leather motorcycle jacket with matching fingerless gloves, and riding boots with jeans and a t-shirt

Accessories: None

Personal Information

Strengths: Able to analyze the opponent's tactics and utilize their weaknesses and is versed in various weapons and fighting styles

Weaknesses: Can have a short temper at times, rushes into things before thinking, and can have a hard time expressing emotions

Skills/Abilities/Powers: Wind and Darkness Manipulation

Weapon of Choice: Bow and Arrow, Bo Staff (Formerly)

Preferred Mode of Transportation: Aeria's uncle of her adoptive family gave her a sportbike motorcycle, that she later upgraded and personalized, that was hoped to be given to the eldest boy, but was the oldest of all her adopted siblings and cousins, so it passed to her

Secrets: Likes to create origami when she's unnerved

Dreams: Helping other kids like her by inspiring them to be more than they thought they could be

Hobbies: Training and tinkering with mechanics

Likes: Training with Nya and Kai, making new mechanical parts for machines, beating Cole and Jay at video games, dragon-riding with Lloyd, meditating with Xia and Zane, and visiting kids at the orphanage during off times

Dislikes: Bullies, oil splatters in the face, losing her tools, and being attacked off guard

Fears: Being left alone again

Personality: Skilled in fighting and mechanics, sarcastic and blunt at times, willing to defend at any cost, hot-headed, stubborn, and brave

Pet(s): None

Background

Job: Ninja

Home: Destiny's Bounty

History: Aeria was born a Wiater to the first Master of Wind along with her older brother Morro. After losing both their parents to a landslide, Morro and Aeria were orphaned with no other relatives to take them in so they moved around from town to town, hoping someone would take them in, but no one ever did so they would mainly live on the streets before being chased out. After being taken from her brother while she was sick as a kid, Aeria escaped the orphanage she was placed in, only to get lost in the mountains. After two weeks of being lost, she stumbled into a village, where she was taken in by a family who specialized in thieving under the cover of sugar farmers in a village. Later in her life, her adoptive family had her work for Ronin, to pay off a debt they owed him, for a few months before she ran away and got lost in the woods around a village called Tozmachi, meaning "bandits' hideout", where she worked as a mechanic for auto body shop manager Jeff, who took Aeria under his wing when he found her wandering the forest. While there, one night, the night after Zane and Xia "died", she was infected by a diluted piece of dark matter from the Overlord when it fell from the sky into a field near her home and, after attempting to inspect the piece, it scarred her eye and gave her abilities of darkness. After being saved from Pythor by the ninja (this part can be read about in The Second Master of Wind), she joins the ninja team as the Violet Ninja, the Master of Wind and Darkness.

Relationships

Affiliation: The Ninja

Family: Morro (Deceased Brother), Unnamed Parents (Deceased)

Mentor Figure(s): Ronin, Jeff

Relationship Status: Unsure, likes Lloyd, but doesn't know how changing their relationship will affect them both

Friends/Allies: The Ninja and their allies and Ronin

Enemies: Nadakhan (in the alternate timeline), Hands of Time, Sons of Garmadon, Aspheera, and Vex


	2. OC File- Xia Julien

General

Fandom: Lego Ninjago Masters of Spinjitzu

Full Name: Xia Julien

Name Meaning: "Rosy Clouds"

Nickname: Xi (pronounced like a z)

Code Name: The Gray Ninja

Age: (Physically) 8, (Mentally) 16

Gender: Female

Race: Nindroid

Appearance

Skin color: Yellow

Height: Shorter than all the ninja

Hairstyle: Bun with layered bang fringe

Hair color: Silver

Eye color: Black

Distinguishing Features: Her silver hair

Preferred Clothing: Gray romper with white socks and black shoes

Accessories: Turquoise sash that doubles as a belt and arm wrap

Personal Information

Strengths: Is extremely controlled of her emotions, empathetic, friendly, and skilled

Weaknesses: Socially awkward around new people, over-analytical, a perfectionist, losing control of emotions, can use only one aura based power at a time, and significantly drains her energy if abilities are used for long periods of time

Skills/Abilities/Powers: Aura Manipulation

Weapon of Choice: Twin katanas and shurikens

Secrets: Once lost sleep for half a month out of guilt for accidentally stepped on a spider

Dreams: Protecting Ninjago for as long as she exists

Hobbies: Drawing and Painting

Likes: Red pandas, painting, and meditating

Dislikes: Strong negative emotions in her vicinity

Fears: Losing her memories as well as her brother and friends

Personality: Caring, persistent, adventurous, impatient, shy, and smart for her age

Pet(s): The Falcon

Background

Job: Ninja

Home: Destiny's Bounty

History: Lived with Zane in a village before he was recruited to be a ninja by Master Wu, but went with him to the monastery, where it was later uncovered that she is the Gray Ninja of Aura, and so became a ninja-in-training, training alongside her brother and his friends and is often the healer for the ninja when they're injured on missions.

Relationships

Affiliation: The Ninja

Family: Zane (Brother), Dr. Julien (Creator/Father)

Mentor Figure(s): Sensei Wu

Relationship Status: Single

Friends/Allies: The other Ninja and their allies

Enemies: All the ninja's enemies


	3. Before

3rd Person POV

 _Many Years Ago..._

One day, on the streets of a small town, two children, a boy and a girl, brother and sister, were running through an alley chasing after one another in a game of tag.

The boy wore a thin white shirt and pants that were stained and dusty with dirt and mud and had longish black hair with a streak of light green in it.

Meanwhile, his little sister wore a plain white tunic over some faded leggings, a loose sweater over it, a small rucksack hidden under with her few things in it, and had her long black hair in two pigtails with her bright purple hairstreak running along the left side of her head.

The girl decided to change the game a bit and made a sharp turn, throwing her brother off and hiding behind a trash can, putting both of her hands over her mouth to stifle her giggles. She was peeking out of her hiding spot to see if her brother was around when she felt herself get lifted off the ground from behind,

"Gotcha!" Her brother tried to toss her up, but, being too heavy for him, they both toppled over, laughing to themselves.

"You have to catch me again!" The girl squealed as she jumped up and raced off again her brother shouting after her,

"No fair!"

Their fun was interrupted when the girl's stomach growled loudly at her and pinched a little bit. She slowed her running and clutched her stomach in pain.

"Hey what's wro-" The boy caught up and saw her position, a worried frown taking over his face as he asked,

"You hungry?"

The girl didn't say anything, but her grimace and tiny nod were all he needed to see.

"Don't worry, we'll find something to eat soon... I hope." Her brother told her in assurance, whispering the last part to himself, as he took her hand and led her through an alley that opened to a market place.

When they got there, they stayed hidden behind some trash cans and watched as vendors sold their goods to passing people.

"I'll go distract them while you grab what you can." The boy said as he gestured to a big platform surrounding a cherry tree near the stands.

"Ok." The girl nodded as she took the rucksack off her back and made room in it. Nodding to each other, they both went off on their own, the boy leaping onto the edge of the platform and pretended to slip and fall off the stairs that led up to them.

"Ow! My leg, it hurts so bad!" He clutched his knee as people started to gather around worrying about him. This gave the girl the opportunity to sneak around behind them, snatching all the food she could from the stalls and carts they were in and stuffing them into her rucksack.

When she finished filling it up, she signaled to her brother by waving her free arm in the air and running back into the alley. She had hidden her rucksack behind a can and was just about to hide a small watermelon she managed to carry next to it when a large hand roughly grabbed her by the collar and lifted her into the air.

"Thought you could steal from me and get away with it aye?" The man gruffly asked as he grabbed the melon out of her shaking hands and walked over to an old water well that was near the market, but no one really used it.

"N-n-no please n-not again!" The girl cried out in fear and started twisting in his grip as she knew what he was about to do.

"You street rats need to be taught a lesson." He sneered as he hauled her up over the edge and dropped her in, leaving her alone in the well.

The water was freezing and furry with algae that grew on the stone walls, making it too slippery to get a good hold and stay above water. Just as the girl was about to slip under, though, a bucket on a rope came splashing down. Looking up, she saw her brother at the top, holding the rope with one hand and waving the other one yelling urgently,

"Quick get in!" And she did just that without hesitation.

When she got hauled back up to the surface to her brother, he grabbed her out of the bucket and hugged her tightly.

"Are you alright?"

"Yes, the big man took the melon and dropped me in the well... again." She said silently and she buried her face into her brother's shoulder.

"Come on, let's get out of here." With that, they ran back to the alley to retrieve the rucksack of stolen food and hightailed it to the small hut they had made for themselves deep in the woods outside of town.

It was constructed from some tree branches as the frame and some cloth as the cover. For light, they used a paper lantern that had some rips in it, but still managed just fine as it was lit by the boy coming in and closing the main entrance flap behind his sister.

"What'd you grab?" The boy asked as he settled himself on his 'bed'.

"Some apples, nuts, a fish, a few dumplings and… broccoli." She wrinkled her nose at the green vegetable she pulled out of the sack.

"Hey, at least now we have some food." The boy reminded his sister as she looked down in shame for complaining and broke the broccoli in half as best she could so they could share before digging into the other food she stole.

Later that night, they were getting settled under their blankets and the boy was about to blow out the lantern when his sister asked,

"Are we ever going to find a home so we don't have to steal anymore?" She looked at him with big hopeful black eyes.

"I don't know sis, most people judge us based on how we look and we look-"

"Dirty." She finished for him and he nodded in disappointment.

"I just thought.. that maybe someone would want us..." The boy looked concerned at the tone of sadness in his little sister's voice as she hugged her knees and rested her chin on top of them.

"Hey, we have each other, and that's all we really need…" The boy sat up and placed his hands on his sister's shoulders, making her look him in the eyes. She managed a small smile at that as he ruffled her hair and she did the same to him before going under their blankets,

"Goodnight Aeria." The boy whispered as he blew out the lantern.

"Goodnight... Morro..."


	4. Back in Action

3rd Person POV with Sensei Wu

Wu was meditating in his room on the Destiny's Bounty, the flying ship he and his students called home, while they were training up on deck as they docked the ship just outside of Ninjago's borders in the Badlands.

While in meditation, the spirit smoke showed him the six ninja in their fighting stances with their weapons before a white-scaled Pythor.

They battled him fiercely, but he was, somehow, stronger and it seemed that all the ninja were about to be defeated when something dark-streaked around and was able to land a hit on Pythor, revealing themselves to be a person before a horrifyingly familiar red and purple eye filled his vision and the smoke dissipated.

Wu snapped out of the vision just as Misako walked through the door with a pot of hot water for his tea.

"What did you see this time?" Misako asked as she dropped a teabag into the pot to steep.

"I must warn the ninja that Pythor has returned and possibly the Overlord, but I think I know something that may help with the latter." Wu told her.

"Will you need my assistance?" Wu nodded in response to Misako's question as he got his bamboo staff and they walked out onto the deck into the high noon sun where the ninjas were battling against each other in equal pairs; Cole against Nya, Lloyd vs Zane, and Jay fighting Kai. Meanwhile, Xia, Zane's little sister, was sitting to the side meditating and hovering off the ground a bit from her powers of aura.

Cole was still a ghost, but had already adjusted to it and was finding ways to use his ghost abilities to his advantage, like how he was practicing going through obstacles on the course to avoid Nya's water sprays.

"Students!" He called out and everyone stopped training immediately apart from Cole, who barely managed to dodge a misfired water sphere.

"Yeah Sensei?"

"What is going on?"

"Is there trouble?"

All the ninjas talked over each other until Wu raised his staff to stop them and announced,

"I have just had a vision... Pythor will return sooner than we expected."

"What?!" Jay yelled.

"We haven't seen that snake since the whole situation with Chen." Lloyd pointed out.

"The spirit smoke only revealed that he will return, not why, how, or when, as well as the possibility of the Overlord's return as well."

"What?!" Everyone exclaimed at the same time.

"Oh come on! There has to be some kind of clue you're _Sensei_ Wu for crying out loud." Cole exasperated as he tried to facepalm, but his hand went through his head and he groaned in frustration.

"You all must be prepared, for I saw him facing against all of you at once and he nearly defeated you."

"How is that even possible? He could barely take us on when he had all the Serpentine tribes under his control." Kai asked.

"However, the same cannot be said concerning the Overlord."

"My brother is correct. We must be prepared for these two's return, wherever and whenever that may be." Xia told everyone.

"I will send the falcon to be our eyes in the sky for him." Zane stated as he launched the falcon from his arm compartment and sent it off to search for the Anacondrai snake as well as scan for signatures of the Overlord's dark matter.

"What're we supposed to do while we wait?" Jay questioned.

"I would suggest laying low while waiting for either villain to show their face, perhaps in the village of Stiix?" Misako advised.

"I guess it would be a good place to lay low and start coming up with a plan…?" Lloyd responded in a questioning tone before trailing off when he saw Wu go back down below deck and come back up with a rucksack on and another held out to his mom.

"Where are you going Mom?" Lloyd asked.

"I will be accompanying Wu on a journey." She answered, not giving any more information, as she pulled Lloyd into a hug.

As soon as the Bounty landed on the outskirts of Stiix, Wu and Misako went their separate ways from the ninja as they stayed on the Bounty, until they eventually got bored.

"Ugh… If we have to hide in Stiix can we at least get something to eat?" Jay complained from his seat where he shook an empty to-go box and a few crumbs came falling out.

"We also need to stock up on a couple of cleaning supplies." Xia reported from where she was looking under the kitchen sink.

"Ok, we'll go into town to get food and supplies, but then it's back to waiting on the Bounty." Lloyd announced as they all changed out of their gi's and into their regular clothes to leave. They decided that Jay, Nya, and Zane would go grab food while Lloyd and Kai would get the supplies that Xia asked for.

"I will stay aboard the Bounty to guard it." Xia said as the ninja got off to get started.

"Yeah and I'm not really in the mood to avoid water in a watered up town." Cole stated as he stood by Xia at the top of the plank that led to the deck.

"Be safe, Xia." Zane told her as he gave her a hug.

"Don't worry, buddy, we'll watch each other's backs." Cole assured him, "placing" a hand on Xia's shoulder.

Just as he and Kai started the walk over to a department store, Lloyd bumped into a person who was wearing a black jacket with a hood over their head and carrying a box full of scrap metal.

"Sorry." Lloyd started to apologize, but the figure just pulled their hood down even more and continued walking away in the opposite direction.

"Man... what was his problem?" Lloyd asked himself.

"Rough crowd huh?" Kai asked since he saw the encounter and Lloyd just nodded in response.

After half an hour of shopping for cleaning supplies for Xia, Lloyd and Kai walked out of the store with a few bags as they radioed in, telling the other group to meet them back at the Bounty.

On the way back to the ship, Lloyd dropped a sponge from the bag he was carrying and was going to pick it up when he heard a weird noise, like a grunt and something full of metal being dropped, coming from an alley nearby.

"Kai, did you hear something?" Lloyd asked, but he wasn't nearby so he ventured in by himself.

It was dimly lit and there were a few trash cans and stray boards of wood and pipes laying around, but, other than that, it looked empty.

Just Lloyd was about to head back, though, when he heard someone groan in pain and when Lloyd looked behind a trash can, he saw the figure he had bumped into earlier on the ground with their box of scrap spilled over and they were laying on the ground on their stomach.

"What the...?" He started to say to himself until a vaguely ominous voice said,

"Well hello, old friend..."

"Pythor..." Lloyd whirled around and got into a fighting stance, his hands alight with his powers, searching for the source of the voice when, out of nowhere, he was swept off his feet by a bleached white tail with purple markings and landed on his back where he was pinned into place by a metal rod.

"Sorry to _cut_ our little reunion short, but it's not you I came for." Pythor raised the rod, about to bring it down on Lloyd when something appeared in front of him and blocked it.

"I think I have a good idea of who he's here for."


	5. A New Face?

3rd Person POV

"Woah who is that?" Lloyd asked himself as the mysterious figure he had seen before had jumped in the midst of the fight between Lloyd and Pythor and saved Lloyd just as Pythor was about to bring a rusty, metal rod down on him.

"Get out of here, this is not your fight." The hooded figure hissed in a scratchy tone from behind their mask brandishing their bo staff in front of his face.

"Hate to break it to you, but Pythor is my concern so I'm not going anywhere." Lloyd shot back right before the figure swept his feet out from under him and hit him back into the other ninja, who had heard his screams after they came to look for him.

"Lloyd!" Kai helped him up by his arm as they watched the figure attempt to land blows on Pythor, who just blocked them with the rod.

"Just give up already, you don't stand a chance against me." Pythor sneered as he dealt a painful blow to their side and they struggled to get back up.

"We'll see about that..." The person growled menacingly as they got back up, albeit slowly and painstakingly, and brandished their staff in front of them.

"We shall..."

The figure whirled their bo staff around above their head and swiftly swung it towards Pythor's head, but he managed to block and divert the hit with his tail. This only made the figure even madder and they just started delivering hits left and right.

After several more attempted blows, the figure struck at Pythor hard enough to where the rod flew from his hands. Pythor raised his hands as the figure pointed their bo staff at him warning,

"Get out of here while you still can and leave me alone..." Cuing Pythor to retreat, for now.

As soon as he was gone, the figure turned to the ninja giving them a clear view of an eye, with a scar over it, looking out from under their hood and over a black mask that covered the bottom half their face and black hair covering the other eye.

"Thank you for saving our friend mysterious-" Zane started to thank the figure before they looked at him with a narrowed eye, whirled their bo staff in the air, and struck it down to the ground to create a rolling gust of wind and dirt that knocked them all over.

When the dust cleared, the figure was gone as fast as they had appeared.

" _Who_ was that guy?!" Jay blurted out as everyone managed to pick themselves off the ground.

"Why do you have to assume they were a guy, they could've been a girl." Nya told Jay with her hands on her hips.

"Whoever they were, Pythor followed them here for a reason and clearly they weren't too happy about it." Zane deduced to the others.

"Why can't you just ask Pixal who they were?" Cole asked.

"Because I would need to see their full face in order to run the facial recognition program."

"And so far all we saw was just their right eye." Lloyd finished.

"Precisely."

"What in the world happened here?"

Everyone turned around to see that Ronin had walked in carrying a toolbox under his arm.

"Ronin? What're you doing here?" Jay asked.

"Uhh... I live here."

"Oh... right.."

"Nothin' much, just a showdown with Pythor and some mysterious figure in a hood." Lloyd cut in.

"Sounds 'bout right for you guys." Ronin responded with a shrug.

"We better get back to the Bounty to track them down, Pythor's not gonna give up so easily in trying to get them." Kai said as they all ran towards the flying ship.

"Xia, we're heading back, be ready to do some searching." Lloyd told Xia through his comlink.

"Understood Lloyd."

"I'm heading to fix up Rex and I'll catch you guys later!" Ronin yelled to them as he headed back to his pawnshop.

"I still want my dad's trophy back!" Cole yelled after him.

 _Time Skip to the Bounty_

"Zane, can you upload the footage you got during the fight to the main computer." Lloyd asked as he readied said computer.

"Uploading now." Zane announced as he plugged himself into the computer and uploaded the video of the figure in the black hood against Pythor. It started to play and everyone watched to see if they could find clues as to who the figure was.

"Stop!" Nya shouted as they got to the part just before the person made the wind and dirt gust. Xia paused the video in time to see that, a split second before the ninja got knocked over, the person's mask and hood flew off revealing their full face, minus their other eye.

"Can Pixal run facial recognition on that face now?" Jay asked.

"Yes I can." Pixal appeared on the screen and a search engine went off showing a long list of names until one name was highlighted.

"Violet Lynn." Zane read off the screen that Pixal pulled up.

"Says here she's the adoptive oldest daughter of three siblings and the Lynn family works on a pretty big sugar plantation. A few years ago, she disappeared from her home and nobody's heard from her since." Lloyd read off as an official photo of her and her family, as a child, appeared on their official company website, but he noticed something critical, "Wait a minute, when we saw her in the alley, Violet had a scar over her eye, here she doesn't."

"Hate to break it to you, but your machine needs updating, cause her name isn't really Violet." Another voice butted in and they saw Ronin leaning against the doorway of the control room.

" 'Hey guys, mind if I come aboard your flying ship?' 'Oh, of course you can, all you have to do is _ask_!'" Jay shouted hysterically.

"What do you mean 'her name isn't Violet', our records are completely up-to-date." Xia argued, a bit annoyed at the mockery to her and Pixal's computer systems.

"Her real name's Aeria and, as far as I know, she was living on her own before the Lynn's took her in."

"And how do _you_ know her exactly?" Nya asked suspiciously.

"The Lynn's are actually a notorious family of thieves who work under the cover of sugar farmers. Couple years back, they owed me a big debt so they had her work for me for a couple years before she ran off and disappeared. She's been completely off the grid since then." Ronin explained as he pulled up a formerly sealed police file of "Aeria" that included a mug shot of her with her scarred eye and a highlight of purple in her black hair.

Under her mugshot, there was a list of thefts and breaking and enterings under her name, but with no jail time since she had just been a preteen at the times of the crimes.

"I'm guessing you had her steal stuff so you could pawn it off?" Kai asked with an unamused look on his face.

"Hey, I needed to make a living somehow."

"Aside from that, where is she now?" Lloyd asked.

"I've only heard rumors of where she is, but you won't like where she might be."

"And where would that be?" Jay questioned.

"Tozmachi."

"You mean the hideout for bandits?" Nya asked, squinting her eyes in worry.

"That's the place. Last I heard of her, she disappeared off to that place."

"If it's a secret place to hide out, then how do you know she went there?"

"I keep tabs on people of interest." Ronin answered simply and bluntly, leaving no room for a response.

"Okaaaaaay, set a course to Tozmachi, we need to find her and find out why Pythor was trying to get to her." Lloyd announced and Pixal set the course.

"You might want to park this thing outside of their boundaries, the people in this place want nothing to do with authority and they won't hesitate to attack if you guys aren't careful..."


	6. Found

_Flying Time Skip_

Lloyd's POV

" _This_ is Tozmachi?" Kai asked as they arrived and were looking down below at the small, rundown neighborhood.

"It's even more trashy than Stiix! And that's sayin' something." Jay exclaimed before Nya nudged his shoulder.

"Well if you want to find Aeria, this is as good a clue as I got on her." Ronin told them as he was standing by the edge of the railing where Rex was flying closest to the Bounty.

"So we're basically just going off of nothing then?" Cole grumbled.

"Well, we are here already, we might as well try to find her. And as Sensei has said before 'A misstep could be a step in the right direction'." Xia said as they all got off the Bounty and entered the town.

The entrance was just a sign saying "Tozmachi Population: 87", spray-painted in red on the side "Keep Out!". The town was hidden behind bare trees and miles of sharp rock pierced trails and the town itself was one "street" with a supplies store, where they provided basic necessities like food, water, and hardware tools, a gas station, a clothing store, and an auto repair shop in crumbling and broken buildings.

"Everyone split up so we can cover more ground." Lloyd announced to the group.

"What ground?! This place is only one street with a couple of crumbling shops!" Jay exclaimed, drawing some attention to them before scuttling off to the side, out of sight.

"Just _go_ so we can save time than if we were to go as a whole. And try not to draw any attention, this place looks rough as it is, we don't want to be looking for trouble." Lloyd responded.

Everyone split up: Nya and Jay took the clothing store, Zane, Cole, and Kai took the gas station, Xia walked around the streets as patrol, and Lloyd and Ronin took the auto repair shop.

"How exactly did Aeria get that scar over her eye that didn't show up on our profile of her?" Lloyd asked Ronin as they walked towards the repair shop.

"Couple years back, this guy tried to pull one over on me on a deal, so I had her steal back what was sold to him from his house. Unfortunately, my client had been a former swords crafter-"

"And he scarred her eye that way?" Lloyd interrupted in disbelief.

"Yep."

"Wow..."

"Hey, it wasn't personal, just business." Ronin stated as they entered the shop and found a tall, muscular guy with a name tag that read "Jeff" sitting behind a worn down and chipped desk glaring at them.

"Excuse me, sorry to disturb you, but we're here to-" Lloyd started until Ronin interrupted,

"We're looking for Aeria, ya seen her?"

"Don't know no Aeria and who's askin'?" Jeff asked gruffly.

"A fellow businessman, is Violet around?" Jeff glared some more at the two before finally answering,

"V's out back, I'd duck your head when you get in there, she's a little cranky right now." Jeff smirked and pointed toward a room on the far left from where they were at and they started walking down to the office.

When they arrived at a door that said, "V.L.'s Workshop" Lloyd opened the door and a rusty blade buried itself into the door frame narrowly missing his face.

"Cranky, pfft more like violent." Ronin became irritated as he pulled the blade out of the frame and tossed it aside.

They walked into the workshop to find loads of tools, scrap metal, and various auto parts laying around on the floor and on the counters around the area along with a helmet and, in the far corner of the room, a purple motorcycle leaned against the wall. In the middle of the room, Aeria was kneeling down next to a rusty buggy car screwing the lug nuts onto one of the tires. While doing so, she was listening to loud music with some earbuds, connected into a music player in the pocket of the navy blue coveralls she was wearing with the top off and the sleeves were tied around her waist while she wore a black t-shirt splattered with motor oil underneath and her black hair was tied back into a ponytail while a purple bandana acted as a headband, but her bangs still covered her right eye.

She was so absorbed into her work and music that she didn't even notice Lloyd and Ronin standing behind her until Lloyd accidentally nudged her toolbox with his foot and dropped a screwdriver from the top of it and it rolled over to where she was kneeling.

Immediately, she turned her head around, ripped out her earbuds, and grabbed a large wrench from her pile of tools and brandished it like a weapon in front of her.

"Who are you and what're you doing in my workshop?" She demanded, directed at Lloyd, with the wrench in her hand.

"Woah there's no need to get violent here, we just came to ask you some questions." Lloyd tried to assure her with his hands raised.

"What're you, a cop? I ain't answering anything." Aeria asked suspiciously.

"Nice to see you too, Ari." Ronin spoke sarcastically as he came out from behind Lloyd, causing her scowl to deepen when he came into view.

"Not so nice to see you, _Two-Face_."

"Two-Face?" Lloyd asked in question.

"What? This guy your new 'assistant'?"

"If you're still mad about last time, I told you-" Ronin started.

"'It's just business' yeah yeah, and so is _this_." Aeria threw the wrench over to a dented Stop sign on the wall and it pushed in and activated some sprinklers on the ceiling to release smoke. Within seconds, the whole workshop was full of a smokescreen and something was shot at Lloyd and Ronin's legs to keep them from chasing Aeria.

"Where'd she go?" Lloyd coughed out waving his hand in front of his face from where he fell to the floor.

"There." He heard Ronin say and Lloyd saw a faint outline of Aeria shaking off her coveralls, pulling on a black jacket, and grabbing the helmet off the counter.

"I'm warning you! Leave me alone!" She yelled before she pulled on her helmet and opened the garage door so she could ride out on her motorcycle.

"Guys, do you read me?" Lloyd spoke into the comlink he had in his ear as he untangled his legs from the bolas that were shot at the two of them.

 _"Loud and clear, what's up?"_ Kai responded.

"We found her, but she's on the move."

 _"Copy, we'll meet you two at the Bounty."_ Xia stated.

"There isn't enough time, she's movin' fast." Ronin stated and let out a whistle, calling Rex over to the auto repair shop.

 _"We'll just follow you two in the Bounty."_ Kai said.

"Let's move." Ronin called over to Lloyd as he climbed in and they took off after Aeria.


	7. Runaway

Lloyd's POV

"Why did she run away?" I asked as we followed Aeria through the dead forest that surrounded Tozmachi.

"Take a hint, you're a ninja who puts people who live in a place like this away in jail and right after that little battle with Python." Ronin answered with sarcasm.

"Pythor." I corrected him.

"Whatever."

"Guys, how's it going from the Bounty?" I pressed my comlink to talk with the others.

 _"We're getting close, but she's fast."_ Jay responded.

 _"Yeah, faster than Jay's mouth fast."_ Cole added.

 _"Hey!"_

"Come on guys focus! We need to bring her in so we can find out why Pythor's after her."

 _"Understood Lloyd. I will direct the falcon to scout out the area ahead."_ Zane reported and I saw the silver bird fly past me and Ronin in Rex and Aeria's motorcycle.

 _"She's headed toward the twisted canyons, if she reaches it, she'll be able to lose us."_ Xia informed us and I could see the canyon range ahead of us.

"Then we have to stop her from reaching them." I declared and a chorus of OK's sounded from the team.

"We just have to stop her from reaching the entrance by cutting her off, somehow." I thought to myself and I tried to come up with a plan.

"Something like this?" Ronin pressed a few buttons and Rex fired off a few small missiles that zoomed into the wall of the canyon entrance and exploded.

"Ronin! It's gonna fall on top of her now!" I yelled until he responded with,

"Relax, I wasn't trying to take _her_ out, just her bike."

Sure enough he was right, Aeria was able to zoom through most of the crumbling rocks, but just as she was about to make it out and into the canyon maze, a small boulder crashed into the side of her motorcycle and made it sweep to the side while she jumped off and rolled on the ground to a stop.

"I'm going in." I told Ronin and I pulled my ninja mask down before jumping out the side of Rex, leaping off a couple of canyon edges, and landing a few feet in front of where Aeria was laying.

Groaning in pain, and in anger, Aeria pushed herself onto her knees and rubbed her head with one hand while the other pushed her bangs back into place over her eye.

"Calm down, I just want to talk." I spoke slowly while walking towards her with my hands up.

"About what? About how you're going to put me in prison for thefts I was made to do against my will?" She growled as she stood up, but held her right shoulder in pain.

"Hey, are you hurt?" I asked, concerned.

" _Nooo_ what does it look like? You really thought I'd be OK after you two shot me off my motorcycle." Aeria countered back sarcastically.

 _"Lloyd, she's getting mad, you might want to get out of there."_ Kai suggested through the comlink as the Bounty pulled up beside Rex and the ninja were seen on the deck.

"Just let me handle this alright? We're trying not to scare her away, remember?" I reminded them as I continued to inch towards Aeria as she glared at me with her one exposed eye.

"Listen, I know how it feels to do something because you feel like you _have_ to do it." I stood right in front of her as she closed her eyes and hung her head down.

" _You_ have _no idea_ what I've been through." Aeria threw her arms out and a gust of wind was thrown into me and I was knocked back a few feet.

"W-what the...?" I stammered as I did a double-take on what just happened.

"I told you before, leave me alone!" She raised her arms above her head and large wind currents formed around her in a dust tornado, only instead of pulling things in, the winds were pushing outward.

"Guys, I can't see her anymore!" I screamed over the winds.

"Hang on, we're gonna give you something to grab onto." Nya informed me as the anchor from the Bounty landed near me.

"What about Aeria?" I asked as I grabbed a hold of the line attached to the anchor to keep from flying away.

"I got this." I heard Ronin say as he fired something into the midst of the tornado and it instantly slowed and started to stop.

When the dust cleared, I saw Aeria laying on her back on the ground with her eyes closed and a round device was stuck to her leg.

"What did you do this time Ronin?!" I yelled up to him as I ran over to check on her.

"Oh relax, it was just a stun shock. She'll be up again in about an hour or two and, knowing her, twice as mad as before." Ronin crossed his arms while rolling his eyes.

"Do not worry Lloyd, Pixal has analyzed Aeria and reports that she is a little weak, but should recover in a few short hours with proper rest." Zane says as I pick her up and start carrying her onto the Bounty.

"Xia, can you grab the first aid supplies to treat these scratches?" I ask as I set Aeria down on a bed in an extra room.

"Yes Lloyd." She responded and disappeared for a few seconds before returning with the red and white plastic box. I opened it and took out the bandage roll as Xia placed a glowing yellow hand on Aeria's forehead.

"She feels the most pain in her right arm and left knee. I will also heal her dislocated shoulder." She announced and I took the bandages and wrapped them around the scratches on Aeria's right arm, after disinfecting the area, and on her left knee and Xia places both her hands on Aeria's right shoulder and concentrates as a peach light surrounds the area and heals it, but I stopped her before she could exhaust herself healing the other minimal wounds.

I stood up straight and sighed as Xia asked with her eyes closed in concentration,

"You feel guilt and sympathy, Lloyd, why?"

"I just… feel like I can relate to her… Being alone in a big world where you feel like you can't trust anybody and doing things you later will end up regretting." I admit as we leave the room so Aeria could rest.

"But you have us..."

"Yeah, but I doubt she had anyone really looking out for her and having her back after she ran away."

"Maybe you can be the one who is there for her." Xia says as she walks away to find her brother and I think about what she said.

"Maybe…" I whispered to myself, ignoring the chilling feeling I got as I walked down the hallway further from the room.


	8. (Bad) First Impressions

Lloyd's POV

"Do you think she's awake yet?" I asked the ninja, Xia, and Ronin as they all were standing around the main computer which was trying to locate Pythor throughout the region of Ninjago. Abruptly, a crashing noise followed by an angry yell sounded from the hallway.

"I'd say yes." Ronin stated plainly as another noise went off in the room that sounded like something was being banged against something else.

"I'm gonna go check on her." I told everyone, moving away from the computer to make my way back to her room.

"I do not think that is wise, Lloyd, given the emotional state she was in before being brought in." Zane stated

"Yeah, besides don't you think it's a little weird that right after we defeat Morro, suddenly a relative of his appears?" Cole asked.

"Hey did you know that she was even related to him?" Nya directed toward Ronin who shook his head and answered,

"First time _I've_ ever seen her using wind powers like her psycho relative."

"That doesn't automatically make her evil." I started to argue, "We can't judge people based on their family."

There was a short silence before Jay broke with a groan and,

"Ugh! I hate it when you make a good point."

"At least have Xia back you up in case something goes wrong and she goes all rage fury again." Nya recommended and I nodded as Xia began to follow behind me to the room Aeria was in.

"Just stay out here for now, OK? I'll let you know if I need you to calm her down." I asked her.

"Yes." She responded before I opened and closed the door behind me. The scene I saw before me looked like a storm had torn through the room; the bed was tipped over to the side, items from the shelves were scattered across the floor, and, on the other side of the room, Aeria looked like she was fighting herself.

"Hey what's going-" I was cut off when I felt something smack the side of my face, sending me flying back into the wall.

"If this is your idea of a joke, you guys have a terrible sense of humor..." Aeria seethed as she looked like she was prying something away from her face.

"I am detecting a foreign presence within this room..." Xia came into the room after hearing me get thrown against the wall and put both her hands on the sides of her head as they glowed a light blue before exclaiming, "It's Pythor!"

Right before something, or as we now realized was someone, was kicked away by Aeria as she held a hand to her sore throat, but found its way to Xia, picked her up and must've clapped their hand over her mouth from the way she clammed up after that.

"Hello again… _friends_..." Pythor hissed as he revealed himself while tightening his hold on Xia as she tried to free herself from his grasp.

"How did you get aboard?!" I demanded to know only to have Pythor chuckle,

"Didn't you learn not so long ago when you were a child, I have my ways. Now surrender the girl to me or else this little pest is a goner." Pythor pulled out a dagger in his left hand and pressed it to the left side of Xia's face, threatening to get to her circuits.

"No way..." Aeria countered from behind me and stood up to the window behind us and used a leg from the bed to break through the glass. As soon as she did, a harsh wind blew into the room, making dust and wood splinters fly all around the room.

"Wh-what?" I looked around only to see Aeria floating above Pythor with two orbs of black and purple around her fists.

"Leave them alone!" She shouted as she struck Pythor hard enough to where he let Xia go, but the left side of her face cover had fully been dislocated and her wiring showed from beneath.

After she had been released, Xia popped her face cover back on and scrambled over to Lloyd, who hugged her in assurance before her powers could go out of control with fear. They watched as Aeria used the wind that was gushing into the room to fly around to avoid and attack Pythor before he grabbed her by the front of her t-shirt and held her in front of him, smiling victoriously before,

"Say Goodnight Snake." Aeria rammed her head against Pythor's forehead and he was out cold while she landed on her feet in a crouch.

At that moment, Cole phased through walls to see what the commotion was and was followed by everyone else, including Ronin.

"Woah, what the heck was that?!" Jay exclaimed to Aeria before he was nudged by Nya again.

"What he meant to say was, thanks for taking care of Pythor." Nya thanked her, placing a hand on her shoulder before she shrugged it off.

"It's nothing, you might want to get him out of here before he comes to." She shook it off while rubbing the new bruise forming on her forehead with her splinter-embedded hand.

"Let's get him to Kryptarian." Kai told them as he and Jay took each of Pythor's arms and dragged him out of the room and Nya and Cole followed them.

"Thank you for saving my sister, I am indebted to you Aeria." Zane thanked her as he placed an arm around Xia and they both bowed to her.

"Seriously it's nothing I just couldn't stand by and..." She trailed off and, sensing that she wasn't going to finish her sentence, nor did she want to, Zane and Xia left the room to help with the detainment of Pythor, leaving just me, Ronin, and Aeria.

"So..." I started before Ronin butted in,

"What's with the new powers?"

"I don't know what you're talking about." Aeria murmured before starting to flip the bed back over to clean up and I talked to Ronin on the side.

"Come on, let's just give her some space, for now."

"Ugh fine." He grudgingly agreed and we walked out.

 _Time Skip to dropping Pythor off at Kryptarium_

"Don't you worry ninja, we'll make sure this snake is locked up good and secure." The Warden told me as two guards dragged Pythor away.

"Thank you Warden, please alert us if there's even a small chance he might escape." I asked the Warden and he agreed, leaving the team and me alone so we could leave.

"Well, at least we know that Pythor isn't going to be making trouble for a little while." Kai tried to be optimistic, but it failed miserably.

"Yes, but Pythor has shown time and time again that he is deceivingly clever." Xia reminded everyone.

"We need to be prepared if he does escape." Zane adds before Jay groans and says,

"Why are you two always the downers? Look, we got him and now we know he can't get to Aeria."

"But we still need to figure out _why_ he was after her and what he needed her for." Cole reminded them of the mission at hand, making me think back to all of her fights against Pythor and us.

"I think this has to do with her elements. Both of them..."


	9. Deals

Lloyd's POV

"What do you mean 'both of them'? How can one person have two elements?" Jay questioned.

"You guys didn't see?"

"No, we arrived late to the fight, remember?" Cole reminded me and I thought about how to explain what happened.

"Pythor tried to kidnap her while she was out, but I guess she woke up in time to start fighting back, so when I came in and he took Xia hostage, Aeria broke the window and started commanding the wind, as we already knew about from back in the canyons, but then she had two spheres of darkness in her fists as she fought him. The only other time I've seen something like that was with-"

"The Overlord." Kai finished my statement.

"Exactly, I think _that's_ why Pythor was after her. He wants to control the Darkness the way he couldn't with the Digital Overlord."

"Well, we don't have to worry about that snake anymore." Nya stated proudly, "The Warden just sent word that they placed him in an upgraded cell that he won't be getting out anytime soon."

"Still, we need to find some way to get Aeria to tell us how she got two elements and why she's evil." Kai stated while crossing his arms.

"Kai!" I started to scold him.

"Lloyd, she's a relative of _Morro_ , the guy that tortured you, turned you against us, and has been haunting your dreams for weeks now, that _has_ to make her evil too." Kai argued and I thought back to all the restless nights I've had for the past few weeks where Kai usually finds out and stays with me until I'm able to fall back asleep like the brother who would always look out for me as he promised me before Morro took possession of me.

 _I guess it's understandable why he's a little suspicious about Aeria, but still..._

"Kai, as Lloyd has reminded us, we can not be too quick to judge someone based on who they might be related to or associated with." Zane pointed out, making Kai grunt in response.

"Hey uh speaking of 'associated with', where's Ronin?" Jay asked and we all looked around to see he was gone.

"Oh boy..." I silently slapped a hand to my forehead.

 _I don't need a sixth sense to see where this is going..._

 _Meanwhile..._

Aeria's POV

I was busy trying to find another way to escape the room I was in on this, from what I found out after breaking the window, was a flying ship for about an hour by trying to pry the metal frame around the window out so I could make my escape from wherever these color-coded do-gooders were holding me. I stopped after a little bit since the hand I used to break off the bed leg earlier still had some splinters in it despite my efforts to pull them out with my teeth and they were throbbing in pain. I stopped to lean my forehead against the frame in exhaustion when the door silently opened and closed behind me.

"What do you want Ronin?" I asked without having to turn around to know who was behind me.

"What? Can't a guy can't say hi to his former mentee?"

"You weren't my mentor..." I muttered as I dropped my arms to my sides in defeat then held my right hand in pain.

"Ya might want to fix that hand before you try to escape again." Ronin recommended as he came over to me holding a roll of white bandages and some tweezers.

"I don't need your help, I've been doing just fine on my own without anyone's help." I muttered.

"Said the girl who was living in a place that's worse than an actual dump."

"Don't even go there." I finally turned around faced him with an indignant glare, "It's because of _you_ and that stupid bet you made that I had to disappear."

"Hey, it wasn't _that_ bad."

"You made me steal from a person who could've _killed_ me. All for a stupid sword." I retorted back angrily, but he just sighed and told me,

"Point taken, but these guys aren't going to be like I was. They actually _want_ to help you."

"Why are you defending them? What do you have to gain here?" I asked suspiciously, looking at Ronin with my uncovered eye.

"Business-wise, nothing."

"That doesn't sound like something you'd be into." I crossed my arms and tilted my head a little.

"Trying sympathy for a change. These guys want to know about your second element and they'll just keep asking. Unfortunately for you, they're persistent that way." Ronin put the stuff he brought in on a table that was in the room and started to leave before stopping at the door to tell me,

"They might not've seen it, but I did. You're afraid of your new power, it's controlling you instead of the other way around, and you don't know how to get back control over them. These guys can help you, if you let them. Door's open when you change your mind."

Seconds before he closed the door behind him, I felt my face pinch up in thought. Finally, I made a decision I still wasn't so sure about,

"Two weeks."

"Come again?" Ronin came back into the room to face me and I sighed before saying,

"I will let these guys try and help me for two weeks. If they're unable to help me get these powers under control, I'm leaving and disappearing to where even _you_ won't be able to find me again."

"Deal." Ronin stuck out his hand towards me to shake.

"Ugh... caught up in a deal where _you're_ involved _always_ ends in disaster." I grumbled as I grudgingly shook his hand.

"Not always."

"The scar on my eye begs to differ." I deadpan glaring at him through half-opened eyes.

"Door's unlocked. Just try not to break anything else." Ronin turns and, finally, leaves the room. I looked at the table where the tweezers and roll of bandages are and I sigh as I picked them up and began to remove the splinters that were still under my skin.

 _I hope I don't end up regretting this..._ I thought to myself as I wrapped my hand in the bandages.

When I finished, I hauled the bed mattress back into its frame and lay down on it. As soon as my head hit the soft-as-a-marshmallow pillow, I started blinking my eyes to try and stay awake until my vision turned hazy and I succumbed to sleep.

 _Back to the Ninja..._

Lloyd's POV

"Why would Ronin risk talking to Aeria if he knows she hates his guts?" Jay asks, confused.

"I don't know..." I say as I think to myself about what Ronin could be planning.

"So that I could get her to stay." Ronin stepped in and we all looked at him, surprised he's unscathed.

"Uh heh heh _you_ got _her_ to stay?" Jay asked with disbelief clear in his tone.

"Yeah? Only problem is she's giving you all two weeks to help her or she's leaving again."

"Two weeks!" Cole repeated.

"To help her with what exactly?" Zane asked.

"I really need to catch you up on this too, don't I?" Everyone but me nodded their heads.

"She doesn't know how to control her new powers, the ones the 'Overlord' had. It might look like she does, but she doesn't and you all are the only ones who could teach her."

"But in order to do that, won't she need to trust us?" Xia asked.

"Where should we start with that?" Jay asked and put a hand to his chin in thought before his stomach started to growl loudly and he chuckled,

"Heh heh.. maybe we should start with dinner, I'm starving."

"Ditto, it's almost time for dinner. Who's cooking tonight?" Nya asked and they all grimaced when they remembered it's Cole's turn to cook, despite him still being a ghost still.

"Alright fine, I'll go see what I can make." Cole phased through the wall toward the kitchen as everyone shuddered at what he might make.

"We might as well order some food since we all know whatever he makes is going to be a dry disaster." Kai suggested as he picked up the landline that they kept on the Bounty, "What should we get?"

"I vote noodles." I spoke up automatically thinking of Skylor's restaurant.

"Cool, Ronin, you want anything?" Kai asked, dialing the phone.

"As enticing as that sounds, I'm gonna head back to the shop to take care of some business. I'll be back in the morning." Ronin whistled for Rex when it pulled up beside the Bounty, he went out on the deck and boarded it, waving to us as he left.

 _Eating Time Skip_

"Oh man, that was good." Jay rubbed his full stomach as he finished off his noodles.

"Hey, I could've made something that would've been good too." Cole tried to defend himself.

"Uh, do you not remember giving us food poisoning from your clam chowder?" Kai raised an eyebrow as he asked.

"I am still confused as to how you got clams and made the chowder without getting wet." Zane pondered as he and Xia began gathering everybody's dishes and trash to clean up.

"Hey, did we leave anything for Aeria?" I asked and my question was soon answered when everyone avoided eye contact.

"I mean there are a few puffy potstickers left, some broccoli beef, other than that uhh..." Jay mumbled.

"I'll go see if she wants to eat, then I'm hitting the sack myself. Night everyone." Everyone said 'goodnight' as I took up a plate, put the puffy potstickers on it, spooned the last of the broccoli beef onto the plate, and grabbed my fortune cookie, that I didn't want to eat, and walked over to the room Aeria was staying in.

I knocked a few times waiting for an answer, but when she didn't answer, I slowly opened the door to find her asleep on the bed in her regular clothes with no blanket, even though the window was open and the cold night air was washing into the room right on her.

"I guess she's pretty worn out from today..." I thought about all the times she used her powers, possibly without even knowing what she was doing the whole day, thinking she exhausted herself in doing so.

I placed the plate of food on the small table next to the bed and picked a blanket from the closet that she must've not looked in.

When I brought it over to Aeria and placed it over her, she stirred and her eyes squeezed shut even tighter as a small whimper escaped her mouth and she shifted around making her hand come out from under the blanket

"Uhh..." I cautiously took her hand in mine and when I did, I was transported somewhere, one that looked like the forest, but was devoid of life or color of any kind.

Suddenly, a person ran right past me and tripped on the ground a few feet away from me.

"Hey are you alright?" I went to go help the person up, but when I got close enough, I saw it was Aeria and she looked terrified as she got back up and started running again.

"What's…?" My question went unfinished as I turned to see what she was running from; what looked like a thick fog of purple and black with small purple sparks lighting inside.

"None of this is real…" I slowly backed away in the vision, causing me to fall out of it or something since I ended up back on the Bounty, still holding onto her hand, but she seemed a tiny bit more relaxed than before, settling back into a more or less peaceful sleep, breathing softly and slowly again.

"What _was_ that?" I whispered to myself as I let go of her hand and left the room to go to my room and sleep.


	10. Dawning Trust

AN- Sorry about the little snafu with this chapter before...

Aeria's POV

 _As I slept, I could feel the fear flooding my brain, then my body, but, asleep, I couldn't hide it or, at least, try to control it._ _Looking around, I saw the empty lifeless forest that I found myself in every single night. The same ear-piercing shriek from every night sounded right before the dark fog started towards me and I started to run._ _I don't know what I was running from, but I didn't want to find out, so every night I ran and ran and ran until I woke up, but tonight something felt different as I fell to the ground and continued running after seeing the darkness get closer. Suddenly, a warm feeling spread through me and it was like the darkness around me lifted just a tiny bit. For the first time in years, I stopped running and looked around me as color started to return to the area around me, strangely green was coming back more noticeable._ _"Huh? Look at that…" I looked down at my feet to see a flower, a purple iris, blooming up from the ground, the first sign of life I'd ever seen in this dream. I was bending down to pick it when it shriveled up just before I could touch it and the darkness seemed to come back, even darker and more destructive than before._ _"No no no no…" I fell to my knees and grasped my head as the icy feeling began to crawl its way into me._ _ **"Yeeeesssss, let me into your heart…"** A raspy voice sounded from all around me, but I shook my head and was about to start running again when I felt something cold and sharp pierce my back, keeping me trapped in place._ ** _"You cannot deny your fate!"_**

"No!" I screamed before feeling like all the fight was being sucked out of me before I leaned forward to fall to the ground.

I sharply sat upright clutching my shirt over my pounding heart while drops of sweat beaded on my forehead despite the cool morning air hitting my face.

When I realized it was only a dream, albeit an extremely realistic dream, I took big, slow breaths of air to calm down before deciding to sit up against the wall. I looked over to the nightstand next to the bed and saw a small plate with some puffy potstickers, broccoli beef, and a fortune cookie on it.

 _Should I risk it...?_ I thought to myself before resolving to eat the cold, and slightly soggy, puffy potstickers.

When I was about to eat the broccoli, I hesitated hearing the voices of my younger self with my brother again,

 _Hey, at least now we have some food…_ _I don't know sis, most people judge us based on how we look and we look-_ _Dirty._

When I finished them, I cracked the fortune cookie open to reveal that my fortune was 'Someone special will change your life', but I just scoffed, crumpled it up, and tossed it back on the plate before checking a clock that was on the wall opposite to where I was sitting and read that it was 4:48 in the morning.

"Time to start the day, I guess." I told myself and I put my hair up in a ponytail using an elastic band I kept on my wrist all the time, leaving my bangs in front of my left eye. I hesitated to open the door, thinking I might still be locked in this room like a wild animal the ninja were trying to contain, but, to my surprise, the door opened. I didn't hear anyone so I decided to look around to make sure the coast was clear before leaving the room.

 _These ninja must have some kind of training equipment, right?_

I thought to myself as I wandered the halls as quietly as a shadow, shivering at that metaphor being used in my mind.

I stopped at a door with a sign on it that had a silhouette of a person making a kicking motion. I opened the door to find that there was a variety of mini spinning obstacle courses, a wooden beam to practice balance, and various weapons from katanas to swords to shurikens lined up in rows on a wooden rack as a painted target was on a wall. Finally, I found the training equipment I was most comfortable with; a punching bag.

Sadly, I didn't have my boxing gloves with me, but I felt the urge to hit something so I just punched it with my bare hands.

My bandaged hand stung in protest, but I continued to punch the bag with swift, hooking motions. As I did so, I thought back to when I was a kid and had to do this as a part of my self-defense training, remembering to find the weak spot and exploit it so I began to punch even harder at the area of the bag that looked to be wearing thin.

I spent what felt like forever doing this until I, eventually, got tired and looked around at the other training equipment the ninja had. My exposed eye landed on several bows in a box with a quiver of arrows. I had sworn to myself, ever since that day, that I would never pick up a bow and arrows ever again, but it was so tempting, until I thought about why I could never use the bow again and the rage that went with it came out of me in the form of a furious yell and I swung my fist at the bag again to where the seam fully split and my fist got buried into the sand that spilled onto the floor around by hand.

"Aeria?" I whirled around after pulling my fist out from the bag to see the ninja with blonde hair wiping his uniform-matching eyes sleepily and was still wearing his green gi from yesterday, "What're you doing up so early?"

I stared at him with a suspicious look and simply shrugged, not giving a reply.

"Your hand… and the punching bag..." He pointed down to my hand as the bandage was starting to peel off, revealing the cuts the splinters had left and were bleeding slightly so I hid it behind my other hand as his gaze moved to the ruined piece of equipment before redirecting back to me.

"You should really rest that hand until it heals."

"No kidding, green bean." I grumbled as I tried to tighten the bandage around my hand.

"My name is Lloyd." He tried to offer his hand for me to shake, but I just looked at it while making my 'are you being serious right now' face and he retracted his hand slowly.

"Why are you up so early?" 'Lloyd' repeated his question.

"I always get up early to train, but I don't have my gloves with me so I just did it with my bare hands." I finally admitted when I got my bandage tightened around my hand.

"Do you want me to take you to get your stuff? Since you're going to be staying here for at least a little while?" He offered.

"Why are you helping me, aren't I your prisoner?" I snapped at him, but, to my surprise, again, he shook his head calmly and said,

"We're trying to keep you safe. Pythor isn't someone you want getting to you, but he's not going to be a problem anymore, at least for a while." I felt my anger go down for a second before I answered,

"Then, sure."

"Come on, let's go before the others wake up." Lloyd walked out of the room and I followed him to the main deck of the flying ship I was on, seeing that it was still dark outside.

"How exactly are we going to get back to Tozmachi from here?" I asked and my answer came when Lloyd got up onto the edge of the deck and jumped down without a word.

"Lloyd!" I quickly ran to the edge, expecting to see him hurtling towards his death, but was shocked to see him rising back up on a dragon that seemed to be made of light.

"Where did that come from?" I asked him as I got a good look at the green dragon.

"Elemental dragon, comes in handy sometimes to get somewhere fast." Lloyd sheepishly grinned as he held a hand out to me, but I just climbed on without his help.

"Hold on, we're gonna go really fast." Lloyd warned me before snapping the reins and the dragon took off speeding toward the direction of Tozmachi.

Abruptly, I grabbed his shoulders and stared down at the ground as it blurred by and, eventually, we went so high up, the clouds surrounded us from all sides and below

"Cool." I smiled a little as I let one hand brush against the clouds.

"You wanna see something really cool?" Lloyd turned his head to face me and I must've nodded in my adrenaline rush because he made his dragon do a loop-the-loop right through the clouds to the ground where it was, suddenly, dawning to the morning.

"Wow..." I breathed, still smiling, as I saw the sun peeking over the horizon and Lloyd had whispered,

"Yeah..." He turned to look at me again, but I managed to snap back to reality and straightened my face as Lloyd frowned a bit before announcing,

"We're here."

Sure enough, Tozmachi was right below us and Lloyd landed his dragon a couple of feet away from the border of the town and it disappeared from underneath us.

Fortunately, I managed to somersault when I hit the ground and landed on my feet as Lloyd and I stood at the entrance of Tozmachi.


	11. A Blow from the Past

Aeria's POV

Right before we got through the gates, I put an arm out to stop Lloyd in his tracks before directing him,

"If anyone asks who you are, don't say anything. Here, knowledge is power and not in a good way. Got it?"

"Ok." Lloyd nodded once and I put my arm down before we walked into town and made our way to the auto body shop.

Once we entered the shop and made our way to my workshop, we were greeted by Jeff scowling at Lloyd and yelling at me,

"Where you been Vi? You got three appointments waitin' for ya!" He gestured to the buggy I was fixing before I was caught, an old jalopy with a smoking carburetor, and an electric scooter with a blown-out tire.

"I'm on it." I told him, but just before he walked out I stopped him and added, "Hey, I… I might not be coming back after this, it's a Blow Over."

We each tried to stay straight faced, but he gave a smile before clapping a hand to my shoulder and telling me,

"Then, it's been a pleasure, kid. You take care of yourself, ya hear?" Before leaving my workshop as I started gathering tools from around my workshop, causing Lloyd to ask,

"What's the deal with that Jeff guy?"

"When I ran away from the Lynn's and Ronin, I got lost in the woods, he found me, took me in, and let me stay here, taught me to box to defend myself and fix anything mechanical so I could work here."

"How is that _any_ different from working for the Lynn's or Ronin?"

"He may not look like it, but Jeff's the closest thing I have to a guardian. We may not have been emotionally close, but he gave me a place to hide, and that's been good enough for me all these years."

"Oh..." I heard Lloyd whisper as I pulled on my safety gloves to get to work fixing the vehicles.

"Shouldn't we be getting your stuff and leaving?" Lloyd asked me as he handed me a wrench after I pointed to it.

"Relax, this'll take me half an hour at most." I assured him as I finished fixing the carburetor in the jalopy after rapidly fixing the tire I had left off on the buggy.

"What did you do for fun around here?" Lloyd asked me out of the blue as I got to work souping up the engine and fixing the blown out wheel on the electric scooter.

"A little bit of tinkering here and there, ride my motorcycle through the forest, boxing training, and that's about it." I responded as I popped off a wheel, grabbed a newer one, filled it with air, and screwed it into place on the axle.

"Done." I declared after starting the engine on the scooter and it rumbled powerfully before I turned it back off.

"Wow, that was fast." Lloyd remarked as I started heading to the back of the workshop where the door to my personal room was. I opened the door, turned on the light, and practically heard Lloyd silently grimace behind me when he saw my room.

I had a rickety bed where I slept, a closet with no door where I kept all my fading and worn thin darkly colored clothes, and a small chipped desk where I worked on small projects with spare parts.

"Home sweet home." I chant to try and lighten the mood as I grabbed my black backpack and started shoving different things I might need into it, including the black boxing gloves given to me by Jeff that were the only things in my room that weren't completely falling apart. I was about to tell Lloyd that we could leave when I remembered one last thing, the little wooden box that I've kept with me since I was a kid. I grabbed it from its hiding place in my desk drawer and shoved it into my jacket pocket when,

"How long have you been living here?" Lloyd asked with concern clear in his voice.

"About 5 or 6 years."

"What?!" He exclaimed when I answered.

"I was taken in by the Lynn's when I was 6, I went to work for Ronin when I was 8, and I came here when I was 9." I sadly explained as I shouldered my backpack and we left my room through the back door to avoid Jeff, not wanting to make it that much harder to leave and never come back.

"Guess I'm not the only one who had kind of a rough childhood, huh?" Lloyd asked me and I was about to ask what he meant by that when my thoughts were interrupted,

"Heya Vi..." A guy in a black beanie with his cropped black hair poking out from under it, wearing a red hoodie and black pants and shoes spoke as he and his two lackeys surrounded me and Lloyd.

"Not a good time, Vince." I growled and he just laughed and got a look at Lloyd before turning back to me.

"What? Too busy hanging out with your new _boyfriend_?" He sneered as the lackeys snuck around behind us and grabbed me and Lloyd's arms and prevented us from being able to fight back.

"Are you kidding me!?" I exclaimed in disbelief just before Vincent came over and punched me in the stomach making me double over in pain.

"You know what happens when you lie to me, _Violet_." He snarled angrily as I lifted my head to face him with a death glare of my own.

"Hey, stop it!" Lloyd yelled out.

"What are you gonna do about it?" Vincent taunted him before Lloyd judo-flipped the lackey holding him and wrenched me away from them, pushing me behind him as he held his arm out in front of me protectively.

"Look, I don't wanna hurt you, but you can't just go around beating people up cause you feel like it." Lloyd started to advise before Vincent and his lackeys burst out laughing as he directed to me,

" _This_ is the kind of guy you're hanging out with nowadays," He laughed some more before continuing, "I hope you enjoy being a _good girl_ now!"

I was seething with anger at that point, so, just as they tried to walk away, I stormed forward, brushing past Lloyd's, still, outstretched arm, and spun Vincent around to face me and grabbed, and lifted him by the front of his shirt as I pulled my arm back, ready to throw a hard punch at his face.

"Aeria no!" Lloyd yelled to me and I blew him, and the lackeys, back with a hard gust of wind as I prepared to strike Vincent, who looked at me with wide, terrified eyes at what I just did,

"P-please don't."

"Aeria, don't do this, you're better than this. He's not worth it." My fist started to shudder in midair as I processed what Lloyd said before growling and roughly throwing Vincent forward to the ground.

"Get outta here…" I sharply moved my bead go motion away from us with a deadly low voice and glare.

He scrambled to his feet and ran away with his lackeys following behind, I turned and walked past Lloyd to the entrance of Tozmachi and he followed behind me.

"Not retaliating was the right thing to do, people like that pick on other people cause they've got nothing better to do and think it makes them feel more powerful." Lloyd tried to assure me as he summoned his elemental dragon and I got on without his help, again, and we took off to return to the flying ship.

"Whatever..." I whispered under my breath and added, "Hey... thanks for having my back, even if I had that under control."

"'Under control'? You were getting beaten up." Lloyd faced me with a look of annoyance and concern merged together.

"Whatever you say..." I looked away from his gaze to look at the ground below us flying past and there was an awkward pause before,

"Who was that guy?"

"Vincent? He used to come around the shop a lot to see me, would try to get me to join his crew, seeing as how I was able to sneak around without being detected from most people, until I told him to stay away from me since he causes trouble for the heck of it and I just wanted to lay low." I explained to him.

"Wow..."

"You have _no_ idea." I whispered as the flying ship came into view in the distance.

"We're back." Lloyd informed me as he landed his dragon on the deck of the flying ship and it dissipated from under us again.

"Let's hurry and get inside before-" Lloyd cut himself off as his friends were lined up, waiting for an explanation.

"Uh oh..." We echoed each other silently.


	12. Unknown Histories

Lloyd's POV

"Lloyd, where did you two go?" Cole asked me as he tapped his foot, making no sound, waiting for an answer.

"We just went to get some of Aeria's stuff from her home, you don't have to look so mad." I tried to reassure the team as Aeria was shouldering her backpack out of their sight from behind me.

"Uh, we're not mad, just a little annoyed that you didn't tell us where you were going with _her_." Jay pointed to Aeria as she stared at him through half-open eyelids.

" _Sorry_ , if I was supposed to stay in that room like your _prisoner_." Aeria sassed back and Kai was about to say something back before Zane came forward and suggested,

"Perhaps we should begin with morning training. Aeria may join us so that we may help her control her abilities." Aeria paled a bit when he mentioned her lack of control, but quickly shook it off and crossed her arms.

"Sure, then I can wipe the floor with _Hair Gel_ over there." Aeria smiled wryly as Kai looked ready to burst into flames right then and there.

"First, we should have some breakfast so we may start the day properly nourished." Xia reminded her brother and they both went down below deck to the kitchen.

"I'm gonna go put my stuff away, see ya." Aeria walked away sending one last half-smile to me before she went down to her room.

"What was that?" Nya asked as she looked at me with a knowing smile on her face.

"What was what?" I questioned, avoiding eye contact.

"I saw that little smile she sent your way, you like her, don't you?"

"W-what no I don't, I just thought-"

"Thought what?" Nya's smile widened as I continued to stutter, "Come on, Lloyd, admit it, you like her."

"It's like I told Xia, I just think I can empathize with her. She feels alone and that no one will understand her, so she pushes people away before she thinks they might hurt her." I told Nya and she just sighed before walking away, giggling behind her hand.

"Uh great..." I muttered to myself, slapping a hand to my forehead in frustration as I made my way down to the dining room.

 _Time Skip to Breakfast Time_

"Pancakes are ready!" Zane announced and everyone hurried to the table to get some, all except one.

"Where is Aeria?" Xia asked as she sat down and placed the plate of butter and container of syrup in the middle of the table and Zane placed a pitcher of orange juice on the table, away from Cole.

"I haven't seen her since she went to go 'put her stuff away'." Kai repeated sarcastically.

"Kai, what's your deal? Ever since Aeria showed up, you've been more uhhh heated than usual." Jay questioned.

"Cause, she's a no-good thief who's probably waiting 'til we trust her and then BAM!, she'll turn on us before we know it." Kai emphasized his point by slamming his hands on the table, making everyone's plates rattle and making Cole jump in surprise at the orange juice pitcher tipping slightly towards him before falling back into place.

"Come on, she might not be as bad as she seems. I was _waaaaay_ _worse_ than her when _I_ first showed up." I remembered when I was a kid, causing trouble so that I could prove I could be like my dad, before I realized my destiny to stop him.

"Yeah, but that was when you were a kid, she's our age and could be planning to turn on us any second now."

"Relax Porcupine, I'm not aiming to make much trouble while I'm here." Aeria spoke out of nowhere. She was leaning against the doorway to the room and was crossing her arms while smirking at Kai, who, still, looked like he wanted to barbeque her.

"What took _you_ so long?" Cole asked.

"I was putting my stuff away and it took a little longer than I was expecting." She explained as she came over to the table and sat down between me and Zane.

"Well, feel free to serve yourself some pancakes, especially since you didn't eat much last night." Nya offered the plate that was stacked high with said food. Aeria took one with her hand, spread a little bit of butter on it, and finished it in two bites.

"I'm done." She got up from the table, dusting her hands, and was about to leave before Xia interjected,

"It would be wise to eat more, you'll need all the energy you can for today's training."

"Nah, I'm good, I'll see you all in the training room." She left and Kai let out a long-held groan.

"Come on bro, give her a chance." Nya told him as she placed a hand on his shoulder.

"I still don't trust anyone who's related to one of our former enemies, but fine..." Kai crossed his arms in displeasure.

"Speaking of which, I searched all records I could find and none show anything about Aeria or Morro having any kind of familial connection, so I cannot tell how they are related." Xia reported as she had the falcon fly to the beam over the table and had him project a profile of Aeria and Morro with a line connecting their pictures, but it had a question mark over it.

"So for all we know, he could be her father, an uncle, a cousin?" Jay guessed and Xia nodded with an unsure look on her face.

"Plus there is a rather large time gap from when Morro was alive to how old she currently is."

"So, you're saying she's supposed to be dead?" Cole questioned.

"That would seem more likely if she was only a few years younger than Morro if they were closely related, but because we don't know how they are related, whether it's as a sibling or even as a great granddaughter, we won't know for sure without some sort of confirmation."

"Why don't we just ask her?" Cole pondered and everyone looked thoughtful before I spoke up,

"She might not be _willing_ to talk about her past, she's been through a lot and I can tell it hurts for her to just think about it, let alone talk about it with people she's just met, and not on very good terms."

"Well then why don't _you_ ask her, she trusts you more." Nya told me while smiling madly.

"Why don't we _all_ try to warm to her _after_ breakfast?" Cole suggested, saving me from embarrassment, and they all silently agreed and we all went back to eating.


	13. Training and Past Fears

Aeria's POV

I was hitting the punching bag, with my gloves on this time, when the ninja decided to walk in, dressed in their signature gi's.

"'Bout time you all showed up." I told the ninja as I wiped a drop of sweat off my forehead and took my gloves off.

"You ready to begin training?" Lloyd asked as he pulled a bo staff out of a large vase that was full of them and spun it around in his hand expertly.

"Sure." I tossed my gloves aside and got into a ready-to-fight stance.

"You may want to put on a gi first." The white ninja informed me as the little girl I saved before came forward with a spare gi that was purple.

"Where'd you find a purple one Xia?" The blue ninja questioned the girl

 _So_ that's _her name..._ I thought to myself.

"I found it in Sensei's room." She responded plainly as she handed the folded uniform over to me and I left to go change, but, as I was heading out, I heard the ninja start a conversation that I didn't bother to try and eavesdrop on this time.

 _Time Skip_

"I can't believe this thing actually fits me." I observed as I came back into the training room with the gi on and the ninja were still engaged in their conversation until I appeared in the doorway. They all stopped their conversation and turned to me when I stepped in.

"Wow, I feel _so_ welcome." I announced snarkily.

"H-hey we were just talking about how we should try to help you control your powers." Lloyd stuttered out and I rolled my eyes a bit at how he was so obviously lying, but decided to roll with it.

"Ok, so what's up first?"

"First, introductions." Lloyd told me as he started introducing his teammates.

"I'm Jay, Master of Lighting." The ninja in the blue gi declared as he struck was what was supposed to be a heroic pose, but ended up looking ridiculous instead.

"More like the master of goofing off." The ninja wearing a black gi muttered before introducing himself, "I'm Cole, Master of Earth."

"Why are you see through and... green?" I questioned as I saw how he was pale and glowing a greenish color.

"Uh... I'm a ghost, but I'm not technically dead." He answered and my confusion only rose until the girl wearing a blue and red gi spoke up.

"The name's Nya, Master of Water and the former Samurai X." Nya smiled at me, but when I didn't smile back, her smile turned into an awkward one.

"And this is my brother Kai, Master of Fire." She introduced the guy in the red gi who's been giving me the stink eye the whole time I've been here. He glared at me before scoffing and scooting farther away from me as Nya sighed.

"I am Zane, Master of Ice and the Titanium ninja." The metal looking ninja in the white gi, who thanked me for saving Xia yesterday, introduced himself and bowed a little as he did so, "And you already know my little sister Xia."

"I am the Master of Aura." Xia wore a gray gi and, like her brother, bowed down as she introduced herself.

"And I'm the Master of Energy." Lloyd told me before adding, "And the former Master of Golden Power."

"What do you mean 'former', I thought-" I started to ask before Kai interrupted,

"Now that we've all been introduced, we should get to training now." Kai picked up a katana.

"Agreed, we must figure out the extent of Aeria's abilities in order to determine how we may help her." Zane and Xia both picked up a few shurikens each and each ninja got their weapons of choice.

"So, where do we start?" I asked as I picked up a bo staff.

"Let's pair you up with each of us to see how you deal with each of our strategies in physical weapons." Cole suggested.

"Ok." I shrugged and twirled the bo staff around my fingers.

"First up is-"

"Me." Kai interrupted as he stepped forward, eyes practically blazing with fury.

"Kai..." Nya started worriedly.

"Relax, I'll be sure to take it easy on Hair Gel." I told Nya as he charged at me, swinging his sword at me, but I blocked it with ease and diverted it to hit the ground. Then, I grabbed his wrist with my left hand and pressed a spot on his wrist to make him drop his blade, where I kicked it back up into my hand and pointed it at his neck.

"Woah, did she just beat Kai in less than 10 seconds?" Jay gaped at what just happened.

"I think she did." Nya crossed her arms and smirked.

"Beginner's luck." Kai spat out as I handed him his blade and he snatched it back, earning a hard punch from his sister.

"Now, let's see how you fare against Cole." Lloyd suggested as Cole stepped forward and pulled his hood down.

 _Time Skip_

"So how'd I do?" I asked as I spun a spear in one hand, making circles with it as the ninja were all panting to catch their breath.

"I am amazed at how quickly you managed to defeat us in combat with varying weapons and fighting styles." Xia complimented as she stretched her legs out and some metallic 'clicks' were heard.

"Yeah, weapons wise, you're not half bad." Jay admitted as he stretched out his back from when I had disarmed him by sweeping him off balance with a bo staff.

"I am curious, how did you master various styles of fighting?" Xia asked me and I thought for a second before responding,

"I don't know, I guess just from fighting against others back in Tozmachi? Jeff also trained me a few times and taught me how to analyze and exploit my opponent's weaknesses."

"Ok then..." Jay looked at me nervously before backing away slightly, making me groan internally.

"Now, let's see how you do against all of us using your elements so that we can figure out how we can help you with your powers." Lloyd suggested.

"Uh, I think there's still _one_ weapon she hasn't been tested on." Kai pointed out and walked over to the box of weapons and pulled out the forbidden weapon for me; a bow and arrows.

My face must've been showing terror because everyone started to look at me weirdly as the memories flashed in my mind.

"Aeria?"

Lloyd's POV

"I can't use a bow." Aeria replied hurriedly, and I asked,

"Why?"

"I just can't, alright! I-I gotta go." Aeria threw the spear she was holding onto the rack with the others and stormed out of the room, head down and fists clenched by her sides, right past Ronin as he was walking in.

"What's got her so ma-" He caught sight of the bow and arrows in Kai's hand and sharply inhaled through his teeth.

"Tssss guess I've got some explaining to do."

"Uh yeah, _that_ would be appreciated. She kicked our butts with almost every other weapon we've got. So, why is she so afraid of a _bow_?" Jay asked, but was nudged by Nya again to let Ronin continue.

"Nya, you know that I used to save up a lot of money to pay off an old debt," Ronin paused to look at Nya who nodded and answered,

"Yeah, you said it was from some bets you made."

"Well, it was one bet in particular that almost cursed me and scarred Aeria, literally and figuratively."

"Wait, what?" Cole asked confused.

"You're saying that it was _you_ who made her this way?" Kai questioned suspiciously.

"In a way, yeah. I'm pretty sure you all remember my not-so-good friend the Soul Archer."

"That guy was a real pain in the butt to deal with with the flying arrows that could turn people to gh-!" Jay exclaimed before Nya nudged him to be quiet.

"Before he became a whackjob ghost, he was an associate of mine. This was back when Aeria first came to work for me..."

 _Flashback_

 _8 Years Ago_

 _(AN- I don't know what the Soul Archer's name was when he was alive, so he's just called Archer here)_

 _"You've got the money right?" Archer asked as he was sharpening the tip of an arrow he was holding as he and Ronin were in a warehouse full of boxes of old items._

 _"Yep, so just say what and when and I'll be there." Ronin answered coolly before a door creaked open and closed. A little girl with her black hair in two pigtails and wearing a brown shirt with sandy colored pants and sandals was seen walking into the roam wandering around while looking at and touching the stuff around her without noticing they were there._

 _Immediately, Archer readied the arrow he was sharpening on his bow and aimed it at the back of the girl's head before Ronin blocked his aim with his arm._

 _"Who is that?" Archer questioned as the girl finally noticed they were talking about her and jumped back at the sight of the arrow being aimed at her, letting out a little gasp._

 _"Relax, she's the one the Lynn's sent to settle their debt." Ronin dropped his arm, walked over to the girl, and guided her over to Archer, "This is Violet."_

 _"Helloooo." Archer got into her face and she whimpered before hiding behind Ronin._

 _"Shy isn't she?" Archer laughed loudly before asking her with fake gentleness, "Hey you want to learn how to use one of these?" He readied an arrow on his bow and shot it right in the center of a propped up plate that was sitting on a shelf, shattering it into four equal pieces._

 _"Woah..." Violet breathed and her black eyes widened a bit in amazement as she peeked out from behind Ronin._

 _"Come, I've always wanted someone for target practice." Archer held out a hand to Violet and she took it as he led her over to another room where a few targets were set up, as Ronin watched them go with uncertainty, bothered by what Archer had just said._

 _Back to the Present_

"What I didn't know, at the time, was that he would teach Aeria to quicken her reflexes by shooting at her with his arrows. More often than not she wouldn't be fast enough to avoid them and got hurt a lot." Everyone gasped in horror before he continued, "When he was nice enough, he actually taught her how to use a bow and, soon enough, she was almost as good as the Archer himself, but she was never really the same afterwards." Ronin finished up the story.

"Ok that's sad and all, but how does that explain why she's so afraid of a bow?" Kai asked and everyone looked at him in disbelief.

"Well, how would _you_ feel towards a weapon that almost killed you multiple times when you were a kid?" Ronin asked him back and Kai stopped himself from making any more comments.

"Once Archer thought she was good enough, we made a bet to see if she could steal from someone on her own."

"The bet that scarred her eye." Lloyd realized out loud.

"Yep."

"So, in other words, you _are_ responsible for her ending up like this." Jay pointed at Ronin.

"What?! How is it _my_ fault she became this angry?" Everyone, even Kai, looked at him with arched eyebrows, "Alright, I can see how."

"I'm gonna go talk to her, see if I can get her to let us help her get over her fear." Lloyd started to walk out before he was stopped by Nya.

"Why don't I take this one this time? You know, girl to girl, she might open up a little bit faster." Nya suggested and Lloyd hesitated before letting Nya leave to talk to Aeria.


	14. Girl Time

Nya's POV

I was walking over to Aeria's room to talk to her when I heard someone silently following me from behind. I turned around to see it was Xia. I was about question her, but she answers before I could even open my mouth,

"The boys want me to make sure Aeria does not lash out in anger."

"Alright, but I'm gonna need to have a serious discussion with my brother about _his_ trust issues later." Xia nods in agreement as we continue to Aeria's door. From just outside, we could hear her muttering to herself and when I knock on the door, we hear something rustling before she calls out,

"What?" I open the door to find her sitting cross-legged on her bed, clearly holding something behind her back.

"What do you two want?" Aeria asks sharply.

"We just wanted to talk." We come in and close the door gently behind us.

"About what?"

"Perhaps, firstly, about what you are attempting to hide behind your back?" Xia points out.

"It's nothing."

"Are ya sure?" I questioned Aeria as I walked over and sat down next to her with Xia following me.

"Seriously, have you people never heard of 'personal space'?" Aeria tried to scooch away, but accidentally dropped what she was hiding in the process.

In a flash, I quickly grabbed the object she dropped and opened my hand to find a little origami red panda.

"Awww! It's so cute! You made this?" I squealed and even Xia smiled at the sight of her favorite animal.

"Yes, alright? The tough girl makes origami when she's upset or unnerved, now you know my dark secret. Happy?" Aeria crosses her arms and looks away from us looking angrily moody.

"It's nothing to be embarrassed about, we all have our nervous habits." I try to assure her, but she doesn't seem too confident.

"May I ask how long you have been doing this? It seems like you have much experience in doing origami." Xia asks while pulling on the red panda's tail, making it do little running motions.

"Why do you want to know so badly?"

"So that we can help you, it's pretty clear that you have some trust issues, especially with the guys and Ronin and this seems to help with that. So we just want to know, when did the mistrust start?"

Aeria hesitated a bit before finally caving,

"Growing up, I lived on the streets with my brother..."

"You have a brother?" I ask, already knowing she could be talking about Morro, but worried about how she'd react if she finds out what happened to him.

" _Had_. I don't know what happened to him, I haven't seen him in a long time." Aeria looks down at her fiddling hands in her lap while Xia and I look at each other concerned.

"We didn't always have a lot since my brother and I lived in the streets or away from town to keep from being sent away to an orphanage where they would've split us up," I winced at that point and Aeria noticed and cracked a small half-smile, "So to make him happy one day, when he was upset about some big kids who pushed me around and he defended me, but got a black eye in the process, I took an old newspaper and made him a pretty sloppy paper crane."

"I'll bet that made him feel really happy." I told her as I crossed my legs sitting right next to her as Xia sat in my lap.

"It did, you should've seen his face when I gave it to him. Too bad I never knew what happened to it or him." Aeria took up her black backpack and opened a small pouch on the side to reveal various origami flowers, animals, and knickknacks overflowing inside to where they spilled out onto the bed.

"Cool." I complimented a mini origami balloon made from blue and white swirled paper.

"These are beautiful." Xia pulled out a purple paper rose that was big enough to fit in her small hand.

"After I got separated from my brother, I just kept on doing this to feel.. connected with him."

"Separated?" I questioned pausing from making a bird flap its paper wings.

"Promise me you won't tell the guys." Aerua looks us dead in the eyes with her one exposed eye and we nod slowly.

"When I was a kid, we often stole food to survive, but one day I wasn't being careful and I was dropped down an old well by a store vendor who caught me stealing. Later that night..."

 _Flashback_

Aeria's POV

 _"Goodnight, Morro..." As soon as the lantern was blown out, I tried to fall asleep, but felt a dryness in my throat and coughed out loud a couple of times before I sniffed and went to sleep._

 _In the morning_

 _"Ari?" My eyes felt too heavy to open fully, yet I was awake and sweating so much my forehead was soaking a huge stain on my pillow. I felt my brother's hand against my small forehead and it felt so much colder than me._

 _"Riri, you're burning up!" He exclaimed as I half opened my eyes to see him looking down at me with fear._

 _"I'm alri- *cough* *cough* *cough*" I turned my head away from him as I coughed until I had no breath left and started shivering when I finished hacking as a cold feeling filled me._

 _"I bet you got sick because of the well." My brother growled and tightened a fist until I put my small hand over it and he loosened it._

 _"I'll go find some medicine, just stay here OK?" My brother held my hand as I continued to shiver, but managed a weak nod as he dropped my hand and ran out of our hut as my shivering got worse._

 _Back to the Present_

Nya's POV

"What happened after that?" I asked, not noticing that I was clutching Xia too tightly until she squirmed out of my grasp while I uttered a quick 'sorry'.

"I was taken to an orphanage a few villages away, one where I was picked on even more than on the streets so on day I escaped and ran into the forest, after that I don't remember… all I do remember afterward was waking up to be taken in by the Lynn's." Aeria clenched her hands together so hard her knuckles turned white as she bowed her head down, shaking uncontrollably.

"Hey hey, it's alright." I put my hand on her fists and Aeria looked up at us with a teary eye.

"I never even got to say goodbye to him. He could be _dead_ for all I know and he never knew what happened to me after I was taken from him." Aeria's tough barrier crumbled as tears started to roll down her cheeks.

Xia placed a hand on Aeria's shoulder and her sobs started to subside as she calmed down slowly. I knew she was using her abilities to calm Aeria down since her hand was faintly glowing a light yellow.

"You may not know what happened after that, but somehow you made it to Ronin, and now to us. We're your friends now, you can trust us." I told her before Xia spoke up,

"And we will find a way to help you to get over your fear of betrayal, if you will open up to us first." Aeria looked at me and then to Xia, before wiping her eye and saying,

"Alright, I'll give it a try." We got off her bed and were about to make our way back to the training room when Aeria turned back to face us,

"Don't go getting any funny ideas that I'm enjoying my stay here though, I'm still leaving if you all can't help me, got it?"

"Whatever you say. Who knows, maybe we just might change your mind." I told her while smiling lightly, until she left the room and I sighed to Xia,

"And I thought we were finally getting through to her."

"It will take more than just one pep talk to fully convince her that we won't be like the people she's been betrayed by before." She reminded me and I sighed again, knowing she was right. We both followed Aeria back to the training room, where the guys were still at.

"You alright?" Lloyd asked Aeria and I smirked at him as he started blushing faintly.

"Yeah, and I'm ready to use the bow after all this time."

"Let me guess, it reminded you of Archer?" Ronin asked out of nowhere and Aeria glared at him before nodding and picking the bow up from the box.

"I just thought she couldn't use it that well." Kai stated as he and Jay walked in with some kabobs in hand just as Aeria was about to grab some arrows.

"'Can't use it that well'?" Aeria repeated back, slightly insulted, before taking Kai's kabob out of his hand.

"Hey!" She threw all the meat and veggies off of it as Kai protested. Then, she put the skewer on the string, pulled back, and fired at the target, landing right in the center of the bullseye.

"Ya call _that_ not being able to use it well?" Aeria snickered.

"That was awesome! What else can you shoot down?" Jay exclaimed, but held his kabob stick tightly as soon as Aeria started eyeing it.

"Why don't we try combat with our elements, now that we know you've pretty much mastered every form of weapon?" Cole recommended and we all agreed, until my brother's stomach started to growl.

"That kabob was supposed to be in my stomach, not on the ground." He complained and, right on cue, everyone's stomachs started to rumble in hunger, even mine.

"Maybe we should take a break and eat some lunch first." Lloyd suggested and we all nodded in agreement, "Whose turn is it to cook?"

"I can go make something." Aeria told us and we looked at her in surprise.

"What? If I'm going to be staying here, I might as well pull my own weight around here." Aeria shrugged and made her way to the kitchen to start preparing lunch. As soon as she was out of earshot, I announced,

"Guys, we need to talk..."


	15. Eye of Secrets

3rd Person POV

"I think Aeria's experiencing some kind of dual personality output." Nya told the guys her theory.

"Uh, translation?" Ronin asked from his corner of the room.

"She's been acting weird since she got here, but I think that it's because of her dark element giving her a split personality." Nya explained.

"Well, that would explain why she's tolerable one second and the next she's completely icing people out." Cole observed and Nya and Xia looked over to him.

"What? I heard her talking to you two through the walls. You can't exactly keep secrets from a ghost, you know."

"Somehow I keep forgetting that." Nya admitted with a sigh.

"Well I say we just ask her head-on." Kai declared a bit harshly.

"Yeah, and why don't you just ask her to cut you down a couple inches while you're at it." Ronin spoke in a sarcastic voice.

"Uh uh uh _you_ don't get to talk after everything you put her through." Jay pointed at Ronin.

"Me?"

"OK everyone just calm down!" Lloyd yelled out and got everyone's attention just as Aeria entered the room.

"What's going on in here?"

"Just a little disagreement, what's up?" Lloyd quickly covered up and Aeria still wasn't falling for it, but continued to play along.

"Alright, well, lunch is ready if you guys are hungry." Aeria informed us and we followed.

"That was fast…" Nya murmured as they all sat down at the table and Aeria set out some bowls of noodle soup that had some vegetables in it and a bowl without broth in it for Cole, him looking at her in question before she answered his unspoken question,

"Ghosts are only able to travel through straight lines and water isn't, I do paranormal research every so often."

"Ok?" Cole responded a bit uncertain.

"Finally, I get to use an actual, working stove and oven." Aeria joked as we all started to eat, even Ronin. The ninja, except Cole, just to be safe around the soup, all sat in awkward silence until Aeria broke it with,

"Alright, out with it, what do you guys want to know?"

"What's with your evil side?!" Jay blurted out before getting a hard kick under the table from Kai.

"What Jay meant was-"

"You don't have to sugarcoat it, I get the whole 'being nice one-second and the next I'm a total jerk' can be confusing."

"Well, when you put it like that... it sounds kind of mean." Lloyd pointed out unsure.

"It's true though. I guess since I'm gonna be stuck with you guys for the next two weeks, you might as well know..." Aeria reached for the bangs hanging over her eye and pulled them aside to reveal her hidden eye. It was lined in black with a red pupil surrounded by dark purple and casted a faint red light onto her face.

"Woah! That's not what I was expecting!" Jay pushed back on his chair so hard and fast he toppled backward.

"Yeah, that looks rough even by _my_ standards." Ronin admitted with a straight face.

"Got this little beauty mark the same night I got my powers over the dark." Aeria told the ninja as she covered her eye back up with her bangs.

"When?" Cole asked as he stood off to the side.

"About two years ago." (AN- I don't know what the official lapse between seasons is, so I'm just making up a time-lapse)

"Wasn't that around the time when the Overlord was defeated a second time and Zane and Xia...?" Jay questioned hesitating at the last part in front of said nindroids.

"You may finish that sentence, Jay." Xia told him innocently.

"It is alright to talk about it." Zane added on sincerely.

"Died." Jay blurted out quickly.

"Can you tell us exactly what happened when you got your powers?" Lloyd asked Aeria as she looked away with her eyes pinched up, either with worry or discomfort, it was hard to say before she started,

"It was the middle of the night..."

 _Flashback_

 _Aeria's POV_

 _"Huh?" I pushed myself up from my bed after I thought I felt the ground shaking beneath me._

 _"Aw man... now I won't be able to go back to sleep." I whined as I rubbed my eyes and got up to turn the light on. After my sight adjusted to the sudden light, I started to pull my messy hair up into a low ponytail when I spotted my helmet sitting on the counter._

 _"Might as well go for a ride."_

 _I pulled it on, along with my jacket and some loose boots since I was already wearing some dark purple leggings and a matching sports tank top to bed._

 _After firing up my motorcycle, I drove out into the forest leaving a trail of kicked up dirt behind me. Navigating through the forest, I had started going faster and reached a clearing that led to a marshy bog when the ground started to shake again. Caught off guard, my bike flipped to one side on the ground as I lost my balance, luckily, missing my leg as it was almost crushed underneath my overturned bike._

 _"What the heck was that?" I stood up and brushed myself off when I felt the presence of something overhead._

 _Looking up, a purple comet was streaking through the sky above and it wasn't until it was almost right above me did I realize it was about to crash and I hid behind a tree nearby as the comet crashed into the ground with a hard impact._

 _Peeking my head out, I looked to see that something was glowing in the crater and I cautiously walked out towards the point of impact. When I looked into the crater, there was a little rock-like object in the center that was glowing a light purple edged with a bit of gold and covered what looked like ice spikes._

 _Suddenly, I heard whispering coming from the rock and I felt an urge to touch it, but it exploded into a liquidy substance right as my hand made contact. A small drop of it made it into my right eye and I clutched my eye moaning in pain as it felt like it was burning while being poked with thousands of needles._

 _When I could open my eye again, I noticed that the clearing wasn't as dark as it had been just a minute ago and I saw blobs of red in the forest that looked like the outlines of animals. I started getting the sense that something was wrong, so I picked my motorcycle back up and rode back towards the shop._

 _Back to the Present_

"It appears our suspicions were correct, you acquired the powers of darkness the same day we had destroyed the Overlord." Zane declared as he and Xia looked worried and slightly guilty.

"Guys, this isn't your fault." Lloyd seemed to recognize the look of guilt on their faces.

"Wait, what's not their fault?" Aeria asked, confused about what they were talking about.

"You see, a year ago, the Overlord, an evil spirit with powers of Darkness, had survived our first battle by escaping into a digital realm and it took Zane and Xia sacrificing themselves to force his spirit to go dormant in order to protect Ninjago from his plan to make it like him, dark and lifeless." Cole explained to Aeria.

"But if they died, how are they here?"

"We rebuilt ourselves using the machinery in Borg's factory." Xia answered as she held up her arm to show how, just like Zane, she had a compartment that contained buttons and switches to activate certain functions.

"So I have the powers of an evil phantom who wanted to make Ninjago a place of shadows and ruins?" Aeria asked in disbelief and everyone winced and nodded.

"Typical."

"But we're going to help you any way we can until you have full mastery of your abilities." Nya told her with determination.

"In the one and a half week, you have left to train her?" Ronin asked skeptically.

"For once, Two-Face makes a good point. That _does_ seem like a pretty tall order, even for you Ninja" Aeria admitted before everyone finished their meal and went to go put their bowls in the sink.

"Whatever it takes. You're just going to trust us on this." Lloyd told her as he took her bowl.

"It's hard for me to trust anyone anymore..." Aeria whispered, but Lloyd managed to hear it.

"Aeria..." Lloyd started when, out of nowhere, the Bounty started to shake uncontrollably and everyone struggled to keep their balance.


	16. Accident?

Aeria's POV

"Someone land the ship!" Lloyd yelled as he grabbed my arm right before I could fall flat on my face as the shaking got worse.

"I'm trying, but the wind's throwing us off!" Cole shouted from the steering wheel.

"Aeria!" Kai shouted to me accusingly.

"It's not me!"

"I got this." Ronin ran out to the deck whistling for Rex and when it showed up, he hopped in and made several grappling hooks come out from all sides and hooked them onto the Bounty to slow its descent to land.

Right as we landed, the shaking stopped and we all were gaining our balance back as Ronin detached Rex from the Bounty before parking it right beside them. Right after we landed, we all breathed a little sigh of relief and I looked down to see Lloyd still holding my arm and he quickly withdrew it with a light blush on his cheeks.

"Uh oh, I think the engine's sputtering again." Nya groaned as she picked up a toolbox that she had stashed by the table.

"We will help." Zane and Xia followed Nya to the engine room before she stopped at the doorway and asked me,

"Hey, can you help us fix the engine? We could use someone with your mechanical skills."

"Um, sure?" I responded with uncertainty.

"The rest of us will clean up and figure out where we are." Lloyd told us and Nya nodded in response before picking up a red tool case and waiting for me so we could head down to the engine room.

When we made it to the engine room below deck, I saw that there were a couple of screws scattered on the floor from where they had popped out from the glowing red hot engine. Nya dropped her tool case in shock before grabbing a rag to fan the engine.

"Double uh oh! The engine's overheating, Zane can you cool it down?"

"Will do." I watched as Zane held out his hand and a stream of icy mist came out and surrounded the engine and when Xia touched his arm with her hand glowing a light blue, the mist amplified and the engine cooled down even faster. I watched as they were able to use their powers without hesitation and felt a wave of embarrassment wash over me.

"It should be safe to examine now." Xia told me and I hesitated before saying,

"Ok, but I'm more used to working with automobiles not...flying pirate ships." I lay on a small, wooden dolly on my back and rolled it to where I could peer up into the engine.

"I think I found the problem." I rolled out with a broken pipe in hand, "It looks like the internal cooling system's been compromised, that's why the engine overheated and almost made the ship shake apart from the inside."

"I thought we had just replaced that part." Nya groaned.

"As did I." Zane agreed.

"Yeah, but the thing is, that this didn't break on its own, it looks like it was smashed in." I pointed a small, circular dent on the side of the pipe right where the cracking began and asked nervously, "You don't think Pythor managed to escape and did this, do you?"

"I'll go call the Warden and see." Nya ran back up the steps from the engine room.

"In the meanwhile..." I started as I tossed the broken pipe aside and got on my back on the floor to check for any more damage.

"Could one of you hand me a wrench and a new pipe?" and Xia handed me a new pipe and Zane gave me a monkey wrench. I rolled back under before securing the pipe into place using the wrench.

"Is there anything else you need to fix the engine?" Zane asked and I turned my attention away from my work and, in the process, jerked the wrench right into the oil regulator valve and the force made the valve open and black lubricating oil splattered out onto my face and the top of my gi.

I rolled out with the mess on my face and I heard Zane and Xia gasp a bit as I continued blindly,

"Just a towel and Nya since we need to refill the water intake." I heard them run off and I was left alone to my thoughts until I heard more footsteps, a lot sooner than I had expected, and then something was pressed in my hand that felt soft yet course. I used it to wipe the oil out of my eyes and saw Nya kneeling over me with Kai behind her, obviously because he still didn't trust me.

"You OK?" Nya asked as she took the cloth back and stood over the engine to use her powers to make water flow from her hand into the intake.

"I'm fine, believe it or not, that's not the first time I've had lubricating motor oil explode in my face." I told them as I wiped a bit of oil off my cheek and rubbed it between my fingers.

"Is that it?" I got up and saw that Nya had filled up the intake over the limit by an inch.

"You overfilled it." I stated and Nya just smiled and responded with,

"I know, it's so you can practice your wind abilities. Use them to create a vortex of wind to lift out the extra water."

"I know how to use my wind abilities already, I just have trouble using my powers of darkness." I told Nya before Kai "coughed",

"*cough* Liar *cough*"

I looked to the intake and lifted a hand to create a swirling vortex that lifted out a small portion of the overflowed water and let it fall to the floor, making it splash and spread out in a dark stain.

"Guess you really do have _part_ of your powers under control." Kai groaned before he got another kick from Nya.

"You do realize you don't have to keep doing that every time right? I've dealt with people with worse attitudes before back in the shop."

"Well, you shouldn't have to deal with that from friends." Nya shot her brother a disappointed look to which he responded by putting his hands up defensively,

" _What_? I was just saying that I'm surprised she could control either of her powers at all."

"I've been using my wind powers since I was a kid, I've just never been that open and obvious with them." I admitted and Kai genuinely looked concerned.

"What? Did I touch a nerve?" I questioned.

"No, I just never knew that you've had your powers since you were a kid. We didn't even know about _our_ powers until a few years ago."

"And that's why you're really protective of your sister and your team."

"Well-"

"No I get it..." Aeria responded a bit softer than before, "You love them and are willing to do whatever it takes to keep them safe… I respect that..."

"I didn't think you were capable of that..."

"Well, I guess I'm not the devious double-crosser you thought I'd be when I'm not sure I even want these powers at all." I walked out of the engine room to fully wash off the oil when I bumped into Lloyd at the door.

"Oh sorry." Lloyd apologized as he almost ran into me, "I was just on my way down to check on how're you doing and to tell you that Nya called the Warden and he reported that Pythor is still in his cell and there's no way he can escape from the new maximum-security cell that's been reinstalled with 24/7 cameras, a motion-sensitive sensor, and-"

"Woah, you could've just said that he's not escaping any time soon, you really didn't have to explain the specifics. Although, I _am_ interested in the mechanics of those systems you talked about." I put my hand on my chin.

"Well, now that you're done with the engine, how about we go train?"

I was about to answer 'sure' when Ronin came in and interjected,

"Actually, I could use both of your help on something."

"With what?" I questioned suspiciously.

"Rex blew a fuse when we saved your ship and I could use your mechanical know-how and you to keep her from blowing her top."

"Alright Ronin, come on." Lloyd went out on deck, but I was still hesitant.

"Just when I thought I wouldn't have to see that miserable excuse of a machine ever again." I muttered under my breath as I followed.


	17. Spilled Secrets

3rd Person POV

 _Time Skip to the end of Rex's repairs_

"It's done." Aeria deadpanned as she wiped her hands clean on an already dirty rag and tossed it aside.

"What's wrong with you now?" Ronin asked with his arms crossed.

"You seriously think I'd be happy with fixing up your mechanical _menace_ after all these years?"

"Uh, I get the feeling that I'm missing something here." Lloyd commented nervously as Aeria gave him another deadpan glare.

"You already knew that he used to have me steal from people for his 'business', right?"

"Yeah?"

"Well, what you probably didn't know is that he used to call it 'running errands' when I was little. When I finally wisened up, I tried to run away and he would send Rex to catch me with a net."

"Seriously? How long is the list of things you've done before that aren't OK?"

"I don't know, I don't keep track of stuff like that."

"'Stuff like that'?!" Aeria tried to charge at Ronin, but was stopped by Lloyd grabbing her around the waist with both arms.

"Let me at him!" Aeria struggled against Lloyd, writhing in his grasp as he continued to restrain her from fighting Ronin, who just stood back and watched Aeria attempt to get to him.

"You couldn't take me back then, what makes you think you can take me now?"

"Ronin! I'm trying to keep her from attacking you and you're _really_ not helping!" Lloyd shouted to him as Aeria continued to fight him.

" _So_? You still haven't told her about the prophecy yet and I would think that she kinda needs to know about it." As soon as Ronin finished that sentence, Aeria stopped struggling against Lloyd and looked back at him with a warning glare,

"What is he talking about?"

"Do you promise not to attack us if I let you go?" Lloyd asked cautiously and Aeria just gave him another one of her patented half-lidded stares before Lloyd released his hold on her.

"It wasn't a coincidence that Xia found your gi and the bow that went along with it."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"I think we might want to go somewhere where there's nothing breakable for this kind of news." Lloyd began to lead Aeria away, shooting a glare to Ronin on their way out.

 _Short Time Skip_

"You're going to explain a prophecy to me in an empty room?" Aeria raised her eyebrow at the empty room Lloyd had brought her to.

"Well, you might not like what you're about to hear." Lloyd responded nervously before adding, "Plus, there's nothing to break in here if you go all... rage happy again."

"Alright, so tell me about this 'prophecy' before I decide to leave this ship real early."

"Sooooo," Lloyd dragged out nervously before Aeria shot him a glare that told him to get to the point, "Xia found it in Sensei Wu's meditation room, along with your gi and a special now, and all three had been glowing when you passed by it to get to you the other day to settle into your room."

"Just tell me already, what did the prophecy say?" Aeria asked with a hint of impatience in her voice.

"It said,

A lost soul shall rise to the task

Of overcoming their obstacles of the past

Led to this path from an unsure start

With a warring interest of divided heart

To prevent a second Armageddon

They shall rise and resolve their burden

What isn't their name will become their title

Lest their dark heart to them become entitled... After that, the rest of the scroll was torn off, so we don't know how it ends. And, after seeing how you reacted to the bow, we didn't think you'd want the one that came with your gi."

"What the heck does any of that even mean and how do you know that it can even apply to me?" Aeria snapped with annoyance in her voice.

"Because you don't know much about your past, your grudges from the past concern Ronin and us, and you're now a part of this team as the Violet ninja, your alter name."

"And what makes you think I want to join this team or be apart of some stupid prophecy that ends who knows how?!" Aeria was yelling furiously at that point, getting closer and closer to Lloyd as she yelled in his face to the point where he could feel a kind of heat coming from Aeria's covered eye.

"Look, I know this may seem confusing and frankly unreal, but you don't have to be afraid of it." Lloyd backed away slightly to where he was a fair distance from Aeria.

After a deep inhale, the anger melted off her face slowly and she closed her eyes and sighed through her nose before placing a hand over her covered eye.

"I-I need some time to process this." Aeria turned away and walked quickly to the hallway where her room door was heard to be shut hard. Lloyd sighed just as Kai was walking by and saw him looking dismal.

"Hey, what's wrong?"

"I know we all agreed to wait to tell her about it, but I told her about the prophecy and she doesn't seem too thrilled about it. I just don't know how we're going to help her if we don't even know how to help her face whatever she's gonna have to confront in the future. All this talk about the prophecy and future is making my head hurt." Lloyd put a hand to his forehead and groaned as Kai put a hand around his shoulders and tousled his hair a bit.

"You did what you thought was right and she'll come around, after all, I'm pretty sure you're the 'interest of her divided heart' that the prophecy talked about."

"How are you so cool with her now, I could've sworn you were the one who wanted to boot her off the ship first?" Lloyd asked, confused by Kai's sudden change of heart.

"Don't get me wrong, I'm still keeping an eye around her, but I _guess_ I should give her a chance to prove herself." Kai grumbled out each word as if he had to force them out of his mouth, "Oh man that was hard to get through without gagging."

"Well, it's a start." Lloyd patted Kai on the shoulder as he jokingly held his stomach fake gagging until they were both laughing their heads off.

"I'm gonna go check on Aeria now, see if she's cooled off a little more." Lloyd choked out as he stopped laughing and wiped away a few tears that were at the edges of his eyes.

"Alright, just be careful."

"Don't go all big brother protective on me, I can handle myself around her during her rage spouts." Lloyd smirked at Kai as he left the room and Kai smiled while he was in Lloyd's vision range, but frowned when he was out of sight, worried about what would happen if he was wrong.


	18. Acceptance

Aeria's POV

I was in my room sitting cross-legged on my bed folding back another crease in the purple origami iris on a green stem from my dream I was creating when my eyes wandered and landed on the wooden box I brought with me from the shop that I've had since I was a kid. I picked it up and was about to try to figure out how to open it, again, when I heard a knock on the door.

"Hey Aeria, can I come in?" Lloyd asked from the other side and I answered with a grudged 'yeah', he came in, and stood in front of me.

"You alright?"

"Honestly? I'm more confused than anything else..." I shifted the box around in my hands so it was hidden from Lloyd as he took a seat on the bed a little ways past me.

"Why?"

"I mean at first I was angry, typical of me, because I was being told that I'm going to have to be all these things that I wanted nothing to do with at first, but, then... I became worried that if I'm going to have to do all that stuff the prophecy told me, I might as well do it right, but... what if I can't?"

"That sounds hard, but you know you're not alone in it right?"

"How can you say that if you have no idea what it's like?" I pulled my knees to my chest and hugged them while still looking Lloyd in the eye.

"Actually, I _do_ know how it feels to be put under a lot of pressure to be something you don't think you can be."

"How?"

"When I was first told that I was going to be the legendary _Green Ninja_ ," Lloyd made exaggerated hand gestures at his title, making me laugh softly a bit as I sat cross-legged again before he continued, "I was told that I was going to have to defeat my father, Lord Garmadon, in the ultimate battle of good versus evil, but I didn't think I would have had what it takes to be able to do that. In the end, I almost lost him, but then he came back completely cured of his evil powers."

"How did you and him deal with that?"

"We weren't alone, I had my friends with me to prepare me for my destiny and my dad had my mom and uncle just like how we're all here for you." Lloyd gave me a half-smile that I returned before my face fell and I looked down to the box hidden in my lap before whispering and trailing off,

"I've always been alone since..."

"What's that?" Lloyd changed the subject, seeing my uneasiness, by pointing to the wooden box with painted and engraved patterns on it that I was shuffling around in my hands.

"Oh, it's a box I've had with me since before I was taken in by the Lynns, I think there's something important in it, but I haven't been able to figure out how to open the stupid thing in years." I shook it around to make my point.

"Can I try?" Lloyd held out his hand and I hesitated before he assured me, "I promise I'll be careful with it."

I handed it over to him as he turned it over and shook it again before rubbing his fingers over some of the designs. As soon as he did, a section of the patterned wood slid apart to reveal plain wood underneath.

"Woah!" I was startled a bit as I started to think that he'd broken the box until he raised his hands and proceeded to explain,

"It's a sliding puzzle box, it's supposed to do this until you've entered in the right number of moves to fully open it." Lloyd continued to slide and reset pieces of the box for a few minutes until a sharp 'click' was heard and he slid open the top to reveal a small compartment within the box.

"What took me years to not even solve took you only a few minutes..." I half moaned as Lloyd handed me the box to take out its contents: two folded up pieces of yellowing paper, a small, glossy smooth, circular stone that was pitch black and had carvings along its smooth surface, and, at the very bottom, a small, sloppily made origami crane made from an old newspaper.

I took out one of the papers and unfolded it to reveal a photo of a little girl with her black hair in pigtails, with a streak of purple in it, frozen in mid-jump onto the shoulders of a little boy with short black hair with a green streak in it as he was frozen as well, turning around to smile at the little girl.

"Is that...?" Lloyd started and I finished his question with,

"My brother..." I touched the photo right over my brother's smiling face and I started to tear up, but quickly blinked them back.

"You two look happy." Lloyd placed a hand on my shoulder as I continued to stare at the photo.

"We were... we always were when we were together." I handed the photo to Lloyd so he could look at it when I started to explain,

"I remember this day, we were wandering around town looking for something to do when he decided to tag me and run off, so I followed him." I paused to laugh a little to myself before continuing, "He thought he lost me when he ran into town. He got so scared, he stopped running, but I was waiting for him in front of someone's house when they were having a family reunion or something like that. I jumped onto his back right as someone was trying to take a picture. We thought they were going to be mad and boy were we right, we took the photo before we ran off with them chasing after us until we completely left that town for the next one."

"Do you remember a lot about your brother?" Lloyd asked me as he handed the photo back to me.

"Not much, I remember he would do whatever it took to make sure I was safe and happy, even if that meant moving around a lot to different places, that's why I made him this." I pulled out the small, lopsided paper crane and smiled as I made it flap its little wings carefully, "I told Nya and Xia about this, one day my brother got hurt trying to protect me from some bullies and he was so frustrated that I wanted to do something to cheer _him_ up for a change, so I made him this. I thought it was gone forever though, like him..." I put the paper crane and the photo back in the box, pulling out the other paper to reveal a map doodled onto the paper but didn't make it to reading it, before I started to cry even more and Lloyd embraced me in a hug as I cried into his shoulder.

"I miss him... so much..." I sobbed even more as I was hit with a wave of emotions: sadness, anger, nostalgia, and, above all of it, guilt, "It's because of me that we got separated."

"I may not know what happened back then, but I know that it wasn't your fault." Lloyd let go of our hug to face me.

"You don't understand, I wasn't careful when we were out stealing food one day and I ended up getting tossed down an old well. The next day I got sick to where I could barely move and it was in that moment that I got taken fr-" I stopped myself with a gasp as I realized that I remembered what happened that day when, only a moment ago, I couldn't, "I didn't remember that before."

"You must've finally remembered after opening up so much." Lloyd gave me another half-smile, "It's like I've been telling you, we're here for you if you need us for anything." Lloyd put his hand on mine before saying, " _I'm_ here."

"Thanks..." I mumbled awkwardly when I finally realized we were holding hands and pulled away to brush away the tears streaming down my cheeks as I stood up and Lloyd got up too as I continued, "I-I'm gonna go clean up to go train. Thanks... for being here."

I went to open the door to reveal Nya standing on the other side with her mouth agape before she started hopping in one place and containing silent squeals as Lloyd came up beside me to see her there as well.

"What did you hear?" We both asked at the same time.

"Everything!"


	19. Resolutions

Lloyd's POV

Aeria and I made our way to the deck with Nya, not saying a word to each other as we went to Aeria's next lessons with the others; Spinjitzu and Airjitzu.

"Are you two a thing yet?" Nya asked with a wide smile that almost seemed like Cheshire Cat-ish.

"What?! No!" We both exclaimed at the same time.

"Oh come on, you two are even saying the same sentences as each other."

"Just drop it OK?" Aeria's tone darkened a bit before she shook her head and continued with a lighter tone, "Sorry, I just don't know why you're making a big deal out of it. Lloyd was just... helping me through some stuff."

"Sure." Nya continued to smile as we made it to the deck and saw that Ronin was there with the others and I thought to myself,

 _This is not going to go well..._

Aeria seemed to agree with my thoughts as she growled,

" _What_ is _he_ doing here?"

"He informed us that you are now aware of the prophecy and we figured out that your grudge against him is one of the burdens that it references t-" Xia answered, but was interrupted,

"I'm just here to watch." Ronin told Aeria, but she still didn't look convinced as she made her way over to the first challenge.

"Try to go through the obstacle course as fast as you can without the use of your weapon or abilities to see how well you can fight without them." Zane explained to Aeria as he pointed to the setup of obstacles, that included a couple of Jay's sparring bots scattered throughout the mini-course.

"Alright, seems easy enough." Aeria stepped up and cracked her knuckles and her neck before she pulled her hood up and readied to go at the line painted on the deck as the starting line.

"Ready? Go!" Nya shouted as she started a stopwatch and Aeria started to jump across the shifting poles, only to be sideswiped off one of the poles by one of the sparring bots that was smaller, faster, and specifically made for sneak attacks. I made my way over to Aeria as I helped her to her feet while saying,

"The first lesson to learn from that, 'Always case your surroundings before an attack'. You didn't anticipate the sparring bot and so you couldn't properly prepare to attack it."

"'Easy enough' she said." Ronin laughed from his position against the ship's edge. Aeria looked just about ready to push him over the edge of the ship when I interjected,

"This time, quickly and thoroughly watch your surroundings as you go through the course so that you can be ready for whatever comes ahead."

Aeria nodded but didn't face me as she went back to the beginning and jumped up onto the poles while quickly moving her head around to search for the sparring bot.

Just as it was about to sneak up behind her, Aeria jumped up and spun-kicked it before jumping to the next pole, slid under the spinning targets, and made her way through the larger sparring bots, making them hit each other instead of her, and was about to make her way past the last sparring bot, when she got hit from behind from one of the spinning dummies and got punched back from the bot. She hit the ground hard as the bot was coming towards her before Jay shut it down and paused the whole course.

"Are you OK?" Nya asked as she came over with a roll of bandages ready, fortunately, Aeria wasn't badly injured and just had a bruised back and cheek.

"While you did not complete the course, you did complete all the moves necessary to unlock Spinjitzu, when it is ready to be." Zane informed Aeria, but she didn't look too patient about it.

"What the heck is that supposed to mean?"

"It means that when you're ready to do it, you'll do Spinjitzu, but in the meantime, let's move on to practicing _Airjitzu_." Jay answered by doing jazz hands before muttering,

"Still think Cyclon-Do has a better ring to it…"

Aeria still looked confused, but we all moved to another part of the deck where the others had set up some flags at the top of the Bounty's masts for Aeria to try and reach and tape X's to launch herself from.

"For Airjitzu, you have to correctly perform the actions, leap up when you finish, and aim for the flags. Once you have grabbed all three of them, you will be done for the day." Xia explained and demonstrated the moves to unlock Airjitzu.

"Great, no pressure or anything." Aeria stepped on one of the X's on the floor and took a deep breath before she made the motions, a bit choppily and stiff, and leaped up as Airjitzu formed a small sphere around her, but it didn't hold up long as she lifted up only a couple of feet in the air before it fizzled out and she fell, landing bent down on her legs and one hand on the floor to soften her landing.

"You have to clear your mind and let the motions flow." I advised her before she stood up and closed her eyes and she did the motions again, this time more smoothly. She lifted off the ground and made it to the first flag and was about to hover over to the second one when the sphere started to fade. After leaping out of it, Aeria clung to the wooden mast and slid down from there with the first flag in hand.

"Alright, you're starting to get there, but there's something holding you back." Cole observed out loud.

"I believe because Ronin is here, your anger is making it difficult to focus on your training." Xia theorized, "Therefore you must make amends if you wish to continue with your training."

"What?! I am _not_ apologizing to _him_." Aeria pointed to Ronin as she turned away looking furious.

"Is this _really_ necessary for her to train?" Ronin came over to join the conversation.

"Yes." Xia responded simply.

"Alright then, I'm sorry. Ya happy now?" Ronin directed to Aeria as she refused to turn around to face him.

"That's all you have to say after everything you put me through?" Aeria turned back around to face him with her eyes literally starting to blaze purple.

"Yeah, and?"

"OK, let's all just calm down and not be too irrational about this." I tried to relieve the tension that was forming around them until,

"Yeah and that job almost cost me my soul getting cursed!" Ronin started to argue back.

Soon they were full-on yelling at each other and Xia was covering her ears and shut her eyes tightly and I knew that their anger must've been the cause so I shouted over both of them,

"Cut it out!" They abruptly stopped yelling, but Aeria's eye was starting to glow more dimly as a dark aura started to surround it and her fists.

Aeria must be seen that the dark aura was, also, hurting Xia as she was wincing in pain, so she took another deep breath and released her fists to calm down and the aura faded away as Xia regained her strength.

"You both have faults, but that doesn't mean that you blame each other for it, that's not what we're trying to do here." I reasoned between them as they both had their backs to each other.

"Alright," Aeria sighed through her nose before turning to face Ronin, "I'm sorry I've done nothing to try to make amends the whole time I've been here."

"Thank you Aeria. Ronin?"

"Fine, " Ronin turned to face Aeria, "I'm sorry I made you steal from people, occasionally allowing Archer use you for target practice,-"

"Wait what?!" I heard everyone exclaim as he finished saying that and I mouthed,

"Later."

"-for siccing Rex on you every time you tried to run away, and… for not being a better mentor when you were growing up. There, that's everything, am I done here?"

"Now that you finally admit it, I am." Aeria lightly smiled as Ronin scoffed and got on Rex. Right before he took off he shouted down to us,

"Now that my conscious is finally cleared from that, you can expect to not see me anytime soon."

"Woah woah woah wait, he was just helping us with Aeria cause he felt guilty about it?" Jay yelled hysterically.

"I guess so..." Nya sighed and placed a hand to her forehead.

"It's fine guys, really, I'm over it now." Aeria assured us and we all looked at her skeptically.

"Wait, so you're not still mad at him?" I questioned, confused and she just nodded.

"Are you sure?" Kai asked doubtfully.

"I was more mad at the fact that he wouldn't admit to what he did wrong. Now he did and I'm fine now, really."

"She is telling the truth, I no longer feel her anger for Ronin." Xia confirmed for us as she opened her eyes from reading Aeria's aura.

"Alright, then. Think you're up for catching the rest of those flags?"

My question was answered as Aeria jumped off the ground and Airjitzu lifted her off the ground and maneuvered her to the last two flags. She grabbed both of them with ease as she was set back down to the ground and held all three flags up in her hands, smiling genuinely.

"Now that you have retrieved all of the flags, you are done training for the day." Xia told Aeria as she took the flags from her.

"We're done already? Come on, that can't be it." Aeria whined a bit.

"Alright, you could practice some more weapon combat with us if you really want to." Cole brought out some weapons.

"Just a round or two and you guys can stop." Aeria reassured us as she picked up her half-hexagonal shape carved bow from where Xia had brought it out, strapped on the quiver of purple feathered arrows to her back, got into a fight stance while beckoning at us with one hand, and we all charged at her at once.


	20. Breaktime!

3rd Person POV

 _A Few Hours (and Combat Rounds) Later..._

"Well, I'd say you kicked our butts enough for one day." Jay told Aeria as he rubbed his sore arm and everyone groaned their agreements.

"Indeed, you are already quite skilled both in hand to hand and weapon combat, but it is crucial to stay sharp." Zane added as Xia closed his arm panel from fixing his gears.

"That having been said, I would say that it is time for a break, in order to replenish our strength." Xia announced as she began to clean up all the discarded weapons from the floor and placed them in their correct positions around the training room.

"I will go prepare lunch." Zane announced as he went to the kitchen to do so.

"Who's up for some video games?" Cole asked pointing to everyone to challenge him.

"What are 'video games'?" Aeria questioned as she put her bow and arrows away, her official weapon of choice since she decided to work past the bad memories she had associated with the weapon so she had another less burden to carry.

"Just wait till you see." Jay grabbed her arm as he and Cole dragged her out to the game room to show her their video games.

"Well, at least they found someone else to bug with their games." Lloyd chuckled a little as he pulled off his hood and made his way to the kitchen for some water and Kai followed him from behind.

"Speaking of which, Nya told me that you two were having a moment together before practice." Lloyd did a spit-take at that and choked on his water before wiping his mouth to say,

"I wouldn't say 'moment', I was just-"

"With her in her room as she was talking about her past." Kai smirked a bit, surprisingly, not in the mean way, but the teasing sort of way before asking, "You kissed her didn't you?"

"What?! No!" Lloyd cried out waving his hands in front of him rapidly.

"But you wanted to. Huh huh." Kai poked Lloyd's arm as he started to laugh some more.

"Geez make up your mind already, do you want her here or not."

"Don't _you_?" Kai ruffled Lloyd's hair before he pulled away stuttering,

"W-what, I don't like her that way. I just want to make sure she's doing alright in the little time she's here before she leaves." Lloyd quickly walked away covering his blushing face while Kai followed silently chuckling to himself.

"Oh come on! You're totally cheating!" Jay's shrill voice rang out from the game room.

"I'm pretty sure that you're just really bad at this game." Aeria countered as Lloyd and Kai walked in to see that Jay, Cole, Nya, and Aeria were playing Dragon Flyers and Aeria won first place in the first round they played.

"No, I'm not!"

"Come on, can't you just accept that she's right?" Nya giggled before she and Aeria shared a fistbump.

"Boom!" They chorused, mimicking an explosion.

"Well, it's nice to see everyone bonding together, right Lloyd?" Kai elbowed Lloyd, making his face even brighter red as Aeria turned to face them with a smile prominent on her face.

"I'll say, I'm kicking these guys' butts at fighting _and_ at video games." Aeria tossed her controller up in the air, made it hover for a few seconds using a mini wind gust, before catching it with one hand.

"Ok Ok, Aeria, you're the new Dragon Flyer Master or whatever now, I'm gonna go get a snack." Cole tossed his controller aside and accidentally made it land on the tv remote, changing the channel.

"Hey!" Nya was about to scold Cole until Jay pointed to the tv exclaiming,

"Check it out, Mega Monster Amusement Park is opening up a new section of rides!"

"Seriously? Nothing new has come to that park in years." Cole asked dubiously.

"Maybe we should all take a break and go there for some fun." Nya suggested and everyone chorused their agreement.

"Wait, where are Zane and Xia? We can't leave without them." Kai asked and said nindroids appeared behind him with some sandwiches on a plate.

"Can't leave without us where?" Xia questioned curiously.

"We're all heading to Mega Monster Amusement Park's new ride's opening since we could all use a break from training Aeria."

"Uh, I thought these video games _were_ our break." Aeria asked confused.

"If you had that much fun playing a little video game, imagine how much more fun we can all have going on some new rides while we go to the grand opening where everyone will be!" Jay exclaimed excitedly until,

"Fun as that sounds, I think I'm gonna sit that out and stay here to train some more." Aeria put her controller down and quickly walked out of the room, tying her hair up as she left.

"We can't just leave her here by herself." Nya argued.

"And she needs to do something other than training for a change." Cole added.

"Plus, a day of having fun might just be the key to getting her to fully trust us." Jay advised.

"Agreed, I'll go talk to her, see if I can convince her to come with us." Lloyd announced as he left to follow Aeria.

"Alright then, we'll get ready to leave and wait for you two outside." Nya told Lloyd as she and the others left to change out of their gi's and he went to go talk to Aeria, hearing Kai's silent snickers as he went.

In the training room, Aeria was concentrating on creating a sphere of darkness in between her hands when Lloyd came in and broke her concentration, making the sphere fizzle out in her hands.

"I thought you guys were leaving for that 'amusement park' thing?" Aeria picked up a bo staff and started twirling it around in the air left to right, creating small wind gusts that picked up dust from the floor and swirled it around the room.

"We didn't want to leave without you and you need a break from all the training you've been doing lately."

"I can't, there's still so much I need to learn in order to be able to fully control these powers." Aeria looked down at her hands positioned on each side of the bo staff she was grasping.

"Maybe so, but you can't rush things like this and taking a break to have fun might be good for all of us." Lloyd went to take the bo staff out of Aeria's hands, but she wrenched away and stood in front of Lloyd with her bo staff ready to attack.

"You still don't get it. The reason why I'm always shifting between being nice and cold is because my alter personality is growing stronger." Aeria admits as she lowers her bo staff just a little.

"I understand you're scared, but-"

 _ **"No! You don't understand at all!"**_ Aeria's voice came out warped, her voice mixed with that of the Overlord's. Her bangs were blown aside as a whirlwind started to pick up in the room to reveal her dark matter-stained eye burning brighter than usual.

 _ **"You have no idea what this feels like! The pain, the anguish, the- grr.."**_ Aeria gasped to stop her angry rant and her eye stopped glowing as she fell to her knees and hands inhaling deeply for breath as the wind started to subside.

"Aeria!" Lloyd bent down to help her up, but she shifted away from his hand before he tried again.

"Was that what you meant? Your alter personality?" Lloyd asked Aeria as he hauled her up by her arm and she nodded slowly.

"The 'dark matter' that infected me before has been affecting my mind for a while now, creating an altered side of me who's more... evil. I hear her in my head sometimes, telling me to do bad things. Occasionally she comes out in small moments when I'm fighting you guys, but I come back into control just as she's about to hurt you." Aeria looked Lloyd in the eye with a look of fear clear in them, "That dark aura that Xia was picking up on earlier, and was hurting her, that was her trying to take control of me."

"And you're afraid of her hurting us?" Lloyd asked and Aeria nodded again before adding,

"Or the people who might be at that amusement park if I lose control over her while we're there."

"You don't have to be afraid of her hurting us or the people if you come with us."

"How can you be so sure about that?"

"Because you'll have all of us to help you if that ever happens." Lloyd started to take the bo staff out of her hand again, but she still hesitated to let go.

"I don't know... what if she comes out and not even you guys can contain her?"

"That won't happen, you have to trust us on that like how we've been trusting you." This made Aeria completely drop the bo staff and stared blankly at the ground where it dropped before she tilted her head back up and grudgingly groan,

"Alright alright, I'll go, but, right after, I'm getting back to training so I can work more to contain her."

"Then, come on!" Lloyd took hold of Aeria's hand and they began to run back to the others.

"Hold on, you might want to change out of your gi first." Lloyd advised Aeria, seeing how she was still wearing her purple gi, "We'll wait for you outside." Lloyd walked away and went to go change himself out of his gi.

After dressing into her freshly washed clothes, Aeria was about to leave her room before she decided to take her wooden box with her, for safekeeping. Right before she put it away, she finally took a look at the other piece of paper that had been in there, discovering it was a map of some kind before closing it, putting it back into the box, and shoving it into the inner pocket of her jacket.

Lloyd waited for her by the door to the deck and they joined the others on the deck as the ninja all formed and got onto their elemental dragons and Aeria got onto Lloyd's dragon, sitting behind him like before since she still couldn't form her own dragon yet.

"Let's go!" Lloyd yelled out and the others whooped a few times before flying off with us following behind them.


	21. Carnival Fun

Aeria's POV

"How much farther is this place?" I yelled to Lloyd over the wind that was rushing past us as we flew through the clouds.

"Not much farther." He responded as we managed to catch up with the others on their dragons, colored to their uniforms except Xia's which was smaller than the others' dragons and was mostly gray with small tints of other colors in the light.

"We're here!" Jay announced excitedly and I saw a huge place that had all sorts of machines with adults and children yelling joyfully on them and stalls selling all kinds of weird-looking food that I've never seen before. The ninja all landed their dragons and jumped to the ground as they disappeared.

"Haven't been here in a while." Nya sighed as we all walked together to the entrance, only to be met with a strange-looking monster,

"Welcome to Mega Monster Amusement Park!" It yelled in our faces and I got into a fight stance before Lloyd put an arm in front of me explaining,

"It's just a guy in a suit."

"Ok..." I glared at the guy suspiciously as we entered the park and made our way over to the new section of rides that had just opened up as I heard.

"What do you guys think, food _before_ or _after_ rides?" Kai asked and everyone, but me, made faces and responded with,

"After!"

"Oh! Let's ride the bumper boats!" Nya pointed to an area that had a large open pool with a couple of machines on some kinds of balloons in it.

"I'm out!" Cole ran away to a stand that was serving some kind of round, brown pastry with white powdery stuff all over it.

"As long as you don't try to squirt the rest of us with your powers." Kai laughed at his sister as she came over to me and dragged me by my arm to follow the others as they made their way over to the line of people outside the ride.

When we got to the front of the line, we each got our own "bumper boat" and I was still trying to figure out how to make mine move around, when a blast of cold water suddenly hit me in the back.

"Hey!" I turned around to see Jay laughing and I turned my boat around and was about to fire back at him when I felt another spray hit me from the side. Kai had teamed up with Jay to fire more water at me, when I decided to use a wind gust to spray water from the pool beneath my hand to them, drenching them back.

"Hey, that's cheating!" Kai yelled at me.

"You only told Nya not to use her powers." I countered and Nya joined me to fire more water at the guys as Lloyd tried to spray her.

Zane and Xia came over on their boats and, when the others weren't looking, Xia whispered something to Zane and he took some water in his hands and froze it into snowballs before pelting us with them.

When we got off the ride, we were all soaking wet and had bits of snow in our hair that melted in the sunlight, but I felt happier than I had felt in a long time and we all laughed so hard, we were doubling over.

"I believe we may have taken half of the pool with us." Xia giggled as we looked behind us and saw that the tank was halfway emptied than when we first got on.

"I got this." Nya told us confidently and used her powers to take all the water off of us, formed it into a large sphere as big as a car tire and threw it back into the tank, splashing the people who were boarding the boats for the ride.

"We're still wet though." Kai gestured to his floppy wet hair and I mimicked Nya by saying,

"I got this one." Using my wind abilities, I made a large wind gust that completely dried us out within a minute as everyone laughed at their windblown hair before straightening it back out.

"Where to next?" I asked and Cole came walking up to us with several colorful puffs of fluffy stuff on white cones.

"I bought some cotton candy." Cole handed them out to everyone with their gi colors and proceeded to eat except me.

"What is 'cotton candy'?"

"It's basically spun sugar dyed in different colors depending on the flavor," Lloyd explained and broke off a piece from his green cotton candy and handed it to me, "Try some, it's really good."

I hesitated before eating it, but shrugged and popped it in my mouth. When I started to eat it, the fluffy food started to melt in my mouth, filling it with a sweet, sugary taste.

"That _is_ pretty good." I admitted as I reached for some more from Lloyd's cone when he handed me a purple puff on a white cone.

"Here's yours, so you won't have to keep stealing from mine." Lloyd laughed as I bit off a piece from my cotton candy and a different flavor filled my mouth.

"This is so good and really sweet." I managed to finish it in several bites, earning stares from the others.

"Seriously, how can you eat so much so fast?" Kai asked and I shrugged before pointing to a ride that looked like a small, open car on what looked like train tracks, but it went in a crazy pattern.

"Can we try that one?"

"I'm down for that, guys?" Lloyd asked the others and they all shared a quick look before saying over each other,

"You can."

"I'm not going on that after eating."

"I'm not really into roller coasters."

"We'll see you two later."

Before everyone left, leaving me and Lloyd alone near another ride that looked like a boat, but held on either side by chains.

"Shall we?" Lloyd gestured to the line of people who were getting on the ride.

"Then can we try the roller coaster?" I asked and Lloyd nodded before we ran to get on the swinging boat.

We seated ourselves at the end of the boat and another guy dressed as a strange-looking monster shut the doors on the boat and went to a stand with a panel on it and pushed a button before the boat started to slowly rock back and forth, picking up speed as it went along. The boat was getting really high up, about to go down, when Lloyd lifted his arms in the air and motioned for me to do the same. As I did so, the boat went down super fast and, for a split second, it felt like we were falling through the air before getting picked up and swung forward.

"Woo Hoo!" I screamed without thinking and Lloyd started to yell too before we started laughing until the ride slowed down and everyone got off.

"That was so fun! It felt like falling through the air almost."

"Alright, roller-coaster time!" Lloyd led me to the ride I was looking at before and it turned out to be even more fun than the swinging boat since it was faster and maneuvered around more.

"That was so cool, it felt like when I'm on my bike just riding through the forest." I told Lloyd as we got off when I suddenly remembered that I haven't thought about my bike at all the whole time I've been with the ninja.

"What's wrong?" Lloyd asked when he saw that I stopped in my tracks behind him.

"I still haven't gotten my bike back from the canyon yet."

"Oh don't worry, we made sure to go back and pick it up after..." Lloyd trailed off and I knew he was referring to when Ronin shot me down before continuing, "Nya's been fixing, and upgrading, it for you as a surprise."

"And you're not good at keeping surprises a secret, are you?" I smirked at him and he went blank-faced as he realized he ruined the surprise.

"It's OK, I'll act surprised so they won't know you spilled." I smiled at him and he smiled back.

"So which ride was your favorite?" Lloyd asked as we walked around the rides.

"Hmmm, Imma have to go with... both of them."

"Hey you can only pick _one_ favorite." Lloyd laughed at my choice.

"Why? Both of them were really fun and I felt the Call on both of them."

"The Call?" Lloyd looked at me in confusion.

"It's… how I describe my wind powers, it's like the wind is 'calling' me to just… run or fly with it and it's just… amazing… and sometimes I feel like it unites me with my brother for a little while… I like to think he's speaking to me whenever I listen to the wind… it helps me stay-"

"Connected…"

"Yeah…" We both held each other's gazes before we met up with the others as they were eating some other kind of weird, new food. This one was shaped like a flattened heart with an X going through it.

"Who's up for a soft pretzel?" Nya asked as she held out one to me and Lloyd.

"Thanks guys, but shouldn't we hold off on all the food until _after_ we finish riding the rides?" Lloyd asked and they all shared a look before they all, except Zane and Xia, chorused,

"Nah!"

"But you guys said-" I broke off Lloyd's protest with,

"Save it Lloyd, they're obviously not thinking too clearly right now after that sugary stuff. It actually might be cool to watch them spew it back up." I pointed to their food while fake wicked smiling.

"Ewww... save the puke stuff until _after_ I finish my pretzel."

Once again, Lloyd broke off a chunk from his food to give to me to try and when I tried it, my mouth crinkled up at the salty taste. I started coughing when Lloyd complained to Nya,

"Why do you guys ask for so much salt on your soft pretzels?"

"They just come that way, brush it off if there's too much." Lloyd did so and offered me some more, but I shook my head rapidly, declining.

"No thanks, I'm gonna go on another ride."

"Well, you better hurry this place is about to close." Xia told me as I barely realized that it was getting dark.

"What?! I could've sworn we just got here."

"Time flies when you're having fun." Nya told me and I realized that I _was_ having fun, a lot in fact, and with these people, who I now realized that they really were my friends...

"I wanna try the high swings before we leave then." I told them before running off to the ride with no line.

3rd Person POV

Aeria ran off to go to the high swings and Lloyd was about to follow her, but Kai challenged him, Jay, and Cole to see who could finish eating an extra-large bucket of popcorn the fastest.

So, as he obliged them to the challenge, while still on a sugar high, Aeria went up to the ride with no line and was let on by another figure in a monster costume and, when no one was looking, the figure smirked to himself as he closed the gate to the ride with a harsh 'bang'.


	22. Cornered

Aeria's POV

I seated myself into one of the chairs on the ends of the chains keeping them suspended off the ground and was finishing buckling myself in when I noticed that almost no one else was on the ride except for me.

"Excuse me, sir, why is this ride so empty?" The figure in the costume must not've heard me, because he continued to the ride control panel and turned it on as the swings lifted up, so high into the air that everything in the park below looked super small.

Just as the swings reached their max height, they stopped, but they didn't start spinning around like they should've, only increasing my suspicion of something going wrong.

"Hey, what's going on?!" I yelled down to the guy in the costume while I struggled in my seat, but before I could get an answer, there was an explosion on the side of the park farthest from where I was and I saw 7 colorful spirals heading towards it.

"What's happening?!" I yelled more urgently as I tried to undo the bar on my seat.

"Oh I wouldn't worry about what's happening over there, but over here..." A familiar voice spoke through the speakers on the ride.

"Pythor?!" I looked down to see the white-scaled snake underneath the monster costume, making his way up to me by slithering up on the center pillar of the ride.

"Come on! Unhook!" I growled struggling to undo the chain seat belt keeping me in place until I broke it.

Pythor was getting closer so I got up from the seat and used my hands and feet to climb my way up the chain suspensions up to the roof until I noticed Pythor getting closer so I lept off and used Airjitzu to fly, a little wobbly, the rest of the way up, landing on the top in a roll right onto my feet and starting looking around for him

Hearing some hissing noises, I whirled around to see nothing but empty air until something was swept against my feet and I was knocked onto my back, my wooden box leaping out from my jacket pocket only to be stopped before it went over the edge with a wind gust to levitate it into the air back to me. I got up and was about to tuck the box back into my pocket when I turned around to reveal Pythor standing over me smirking.

"Did you really think you'd be able to escape from me?"

"I don't know, I was hoping." I answered snarkily as I shot a blast of wind at him to knock him off the top, but he dodged easily.

"Pathetic. You can't even hit me when I'm right in front of you." Pythor sneered as I got back into a fighting stance.

"Oh really." I cracked my knuckles and neck as I ran forward and threw a kick at Pythor's head, but he pulled out a long pipe and made my foot hit it instead as he pushed back.

"You're starting to get really _annoying_." I stated as I tried to punch him, but was deflected by the pipe again.

"The feeling's entirely mutual." Pythor snapped before he grabbed my arm and twisted it behind my back, preventing me from moving before continuing, "However, I still require your assistance, or should I say your darkness."

I wrenched myself free with an angry scream as I twisted the pipe out of his grasp and threw it behind me, off the ride, not even noticing that my box fell out of my pocket again until Pythor picked it up and opened it to take out the photo of me and my brother.

"You're not getting me to use my powers, so just _give up_ already." I demanded angrily.

"That's the funny thing about the ninja, they seem to think they never give up on anything yet they've basically given up on your past." Pythor retorted as he continued to look at the photo before looking up at me.

"What is that supposed to mean?" I growled warningly as we started to circle each other.

"Your brother, they knew him, they've _fought_ him, and yet they haven't told you about that, have they?" Pythor smirked at me as he put the photo back in the box and tossed it aside and I took a second to process what he told me, but shook my head and shouted,

"You're just lying to get my guard down!" I gave another angry scream as I started to try and fight him, but he kept hitting me back until I felt myself going through the same motions as the obstacle course back on the Bounty.

Pausing for a split second to calm my mind, I went through the motions like Lloyd showed me and I whirled around into a glittery purple and black tornado with small specks of dark green.

The pull of the Spinjitzu tornado brought Pythor inside of it and I managed to land several blows on him until he was kicked out.

After spinning out of the tornado, I used a blast of wind to bring my box back into my grasp and I held onto it with an iron grip.

"I may have had my doubts about them before, but they'd never lie to me like that!" I yelled to Pythor determinedly.

"Say what you want, but I think deep down you know I'm telling the truth. Haven't you noticed how they've been so intent on avoiding the topic of your brother and past? All except for little Lloyd who, may I say, has taken quite an interest in you from what I've seen and heard." Pythor continued to smirk at me as he got back up and I readied myself for another Spinjitzu attack when a green light was seen coming towards me and Pythor. When I looked up, I saw Lloyd coming towards us on his dragon with his uniform on.

"Keep what I've said in mind. I have a feeling you'll be hearing the truth sooner than you think. And you won't like what you'll hear." Pythor fell backward off the ride and when I ran to the edge to stop him from escaping, he was nowhere to be seen.

"Aeria!" Lloyd shouted down to me as he pulled his dragon right next to me and helped me get on.

"Where have you been? We needed your help." Lloyd told me as he pulled off his hood to face me.

"With what?"

"A fire broke out on the other side of the park and we could've used your winds to keep it from spreading too far. What were you doing up here?" I hesitate before asking him,

"Lloyd, you guys said that Pythor was supposed to be in some kind of newly upgraded cell in prison, right?"

"Yeah, why?" Lloyd turned back again to look at me with a worried expression.

"I just saw him and we fought, _how_ could he have escaped?"

"I don't know, but we'll find out back at the Bounty, the others went ahead so we need to catch up, hold on." I put my hands on Lloyd's shoulders as he made his dragon fly faster. As we flew through the air with the sun setting behind us, what Pythor told me during our fight kept replaying in my head.

 _Could they actually have known my brother or was Pythor just lying?_ I thought to myself as we flew off to the Bounty that was left flying over a forest before we left.

 _Time Skip to the Bounty_

"Aeria, are you OK?" Nya came up to me as soon as Lloyd landed his dragon and we got off onto the deck and she gave me a hug.

"I'm fine, just a little bruised from the fight." I responded, rubbing the bruises forming on my knuckles and Xia walked up to me and started to heal my hands with her powers, "But, I managed to do Spinjitzu for the first time!" I added, slightly excited, but the others didn't seem to hear.

"Fight?! What the heck happened?" Jay asked and Lloyd answered for him,

"Pythor escaped and he tried to corner Aeria on top of the high swings while we were distracted with the fire."

"What?! How?" Cole exclaimed and Lloyd answered again,

"I don't know how, but he's back and we need to protect Aeria."

"I can handle myself." I started to argue, but they wouldn't have it,

"From the way you're banged up after facing him, no you can't." Kai argued back before Nya added more gently,

"Look, I know you think you're strong enough to take on Pythor and you _are_ really skilled, but we can't risk him getting you and using your powers for whatever he has planned for Ninjago City." Nya assured me as we all headed inside the ship. I crossed my arms while walking in as my eyes pinched up in frustration until I groaned and responded,

"Fine, then I'm gonna be in my room if any of you need me." I walked back to my room and shut the door with a sigh. I stood by the door with my arms crossed until I spotted my half-done origami iris on the nightstand and picked it up to finish it while I paced the room.

A few minutes later, I had finished it when a knock sounded on my door,

"Hey, Aeria? Can I come in?"

"Sure..." I answered back dejectedly and the door opened to let Lloyd in.

"You alright?" He asked after he closed the door behind him to stand close to me.

"I just got attacked while we were supposed to be having fun and now I'm on lockdown. I'm doing just peachy."

"We really are trying to protect you."

"I don't need protection, I've been fighting to protect myself _all_ my life."

"And it led to loneliness, anger, and more suffering than anyone should be able to handle. You're strong, but having others backing you up can make you stronger." I tried to keep up my tough appearance, but it came crumbling down as I chuckled,

"That was _so_ cheesy."

"No, it wasn't."

"It _really_ was." I punched Lloyd lightly in the shoulder and he laughed after he stumbled back a bit.

"H-hey!" Lloyd tried to punch me back, but I grabbed his arm and flipped him over my back onto the ground.

"Heh are you OK?" I laughed a little as I sent the iris spinning down onto his face as he lay on the ground. He got up and held the flower with a questioning look on his face.

"Keep it, I don't care what that prophecy says, I think you're a pretty cool guy, whether or not it says that you're meant to be my other half." I pulled Lloyd up as he held the iris in his hand and we both sat down on my bed.

It was silent until I took my box out of my jacket and pulled out the photo of me and my brother, staring at it until I asked Lloyd,

"Pythor kept telling me that you guys knew my brother and have fought him before, but that can't be, right?" I looked over to Lloyd hopeful until I saw that he was looking solemn.

"Lloyd, he was lying, right?" I asked more insistently and he responded with a single word,

"No…"


	23. Betrayal

Lloyd's POV

"What do you mean 'no', Lloyd?" Aeria questioned cautiously. I sighed and looked down with my eyes closed as I felt the guilt of keeping the truth from Aeria building up inside of me after she admitted that she trusted us, trusted me...

"Pythor's not wrong, we _have_ encountered your brother before..." I looked back up to see her face filled with confusion and uncertainty. Aeria turned her head away from me and stared at nothing in particular as it looked like she was processing what I just told her.

"What..." Aeria whispered to herself as the photo and her memory box dropped from her hands onto the floor and her head bowed down to where her bangs completely covered her face in shadows.

"I'm sorry, I wanted to tell you, but we thought that you wouldn't be ready to hear-" I was interrupted when Aeria looked back up, her eye blazing more darkly than all the previous times and her fists clenched the edge of the bed so hard, splinters were breaking around her fingers as the bed creaked in protest.

"Hear _what_? The fact that you've been _lying_ to me after you and the others _knew_ how much pain the loss of my brother had been for me!" Aeria pushed me against the wall with a thrust of her arm and kept me pinned to the wall with a harsh gust of wind as she stood in front of me with fury practically radiating off of her.

"I stood up for you guys against Pythor! I told him you'd never lie to me like that and I was actually dumb enough to _believe_ it!" I was thrown to the side with another powerful gust of wind.

"Please listen to me!" I tried to reason with Aeria, but it was in vain as she continued to yell at me,

"No! I don't want to hear any more of your lies, _ever again_!" She sent a rush of air at the door to where it was blown out and turned back to yell at me,

"The deal's off, I'm outta here!" She ran through the doorway and I could hear her running up the stairs to the deck.

"Guys! Stop her!" I yelled out the door after I got up and ran after her.

Aeria's POV

I ran out of my room, eyes stinging with tears and a heat I never felt before, but I didn't care. I just had to get off this ship and away from these liars.

I was so close to getting away when the others surrounded me, preventing me from going any further than the entrance to the main deck.

"You need to hear us out Aeria, please!" Nya tried to plead with me, but I rapidly formed a sphere of darkness in my hands and fired it at them in my haze of anger. It missed them and ended up hitting the mast, taking a small chunk out of it and sent splinters flying into the air.

"Sorry Sis, but it looks like we're gonna have to take her down." Kai wielded his sword in front of Nya as the others got out their weapons. I growled angrily and formed two purple-black spheres in my hands as I readied to attack again.

"Her anger is growing and must be stopped now." Xia told the others as she trembled while holding her shurikens in her hands. I could see that she was wincing in pain and I could feel my anger starting to die down as I tried to calm myself. I lowered my head down when I began to feel a painful tug in my mind and the same icy piercing feeling in my back like from my dream as it felt like I was being controlled from inside my body,

 _ **"Good luck with that..."**_ I lifted my head back up as my voice warped into one that wasn't my own, but that I've heard before.

"Aeria?" Lloyd came out from behind me as he joined his friends in front of me.

 _ **"It's Darkstorm to you now!"**_

My vision went entirely thermosensitive as I saw the ninja as bright red and orange heat signatures and both of my eyes blazed even harsher along with the spheres in my hands, making Xia seize her hands to her head as she cried out in pain. I threw the spheres towards her, but Zane picked her up and disappeared as Jay, Kai, Cole, and Nya stayed to try and fight me.

3rd Person POV

Cole punched the ground, sending out a shockwave of dirt and dust at Aeria, but she repelled it back with a swiping motion of her arms and sent it right back at him, hitting him before he could even try to phase through it.

When he went down, Kai came running forward with his sword and dodged every darkness projectile sphere and managed to land a blow to her side. Aeria fell to her knee, feigning pain as Kai and Lloyd cautiously walked toward her. Meanwhile, Jay went to check on Cole and Nya had gone to check on Zane and Xia as they came back up to the main deck.

"Now that she's down, let's get her back to her room until she's calm." Kai reached down for Aeria's arm, but she grabbed it, threw him back into the broken mast, breaking it even more, with a single shove, and lept up into the air as she performed Airjitzu to the top of the highest mast.

Suddenly, she grasped her head and looked off into the distance behind the ship and growled,

 _ **"I don't think so!"**_ Aeria leaped off the top of the mast and spiraled down below the clouds and was lost sight of.

"Where'd she go?" Jay questioned as they all ran to the edge and looked for any sign of her as the ship was lowered below the clouds to the ocean just beyond Ninjago City.

"I don't know, but she's out there and so is Pythor." Lloyd sighed as he rubbed his sore head just as a voice said,

"Who's out there?" And they turned to see Wu and Misako, dusty and tired, but alright nonetheless.


	24. Returns and Captured

3rd Person POV

Behind them, some golden sparks dissipated into the air, signaling that Wu had used his elemental dragon to get him and Misako there.

"Mom! Uncle Wu!" Lloyd ran to them and embraced both of them in a big hug before the others came over and joined in.

"What has happened around here while we were gone?" Misako looked around to see the marks left by Aeria's darkness spheres, in the mast and on the deck, as well as the weapons discarded and scattered all over the deck.

Everyone started talking over each other to explain,

"It was Aeria!-"

"-Morro's sister-"

"-who's a master of wind!-"

"-but also the inheritor of the Overlord's powers of darkness-"

"-Pythor's been trying to get to her-"

"-for who knows what!-"

"Hold on!" Wu thumped his staff down to silence everyone, "What do you mean she's the 'inheritor of the Overlord's powers'?"

"The night that Zane and Xia took down the Overlord, a small piece of dark matter was launched away and it infected her, not a lot, but enough to where it created a side of her that's like the Overlord." Lloyd explained and Zane nodded in agreement from beside Lloyd as he carried Xia in his arms after she had gotten knocked out from Aeria's rage overload.

" _And_ she's the Violet Ninja from one of your scrolls," Nya added on before blurting out, "and Lloyd's girlfriend!"

"She's not my girlfriend!"

"Not anymore she isn't." Kai snarked with his arms crossed.

"If this 'Aeria' is the wielder of the Overlord's powers then it's a good thing we went to get this." Misako held up a small purple mineral that had a swirling gold center and was about the size of a walnut.

"What _is_ that?" Cole asked.

"It's a mineral that is believed to be able to suppress even the darkest heart's evil in a mortal being." Wu responded.

"Aww so we couldn't have used it for Garmadon since he was only partially mortal?" Jay whined out loud, making everyone look at him in disbelief before paying attention again.

"It is said to be made of a piece of the Overlord's dark matter as well as a bit of Golden Power to keep it balanced." Misako added as she pocketed the mineral into her satchel.

"So we just need to get this to Aeria, or should I say _Darkstorm_ ," Kai made quote hand motions before continuing, "and she'll be back to her semi-not evil self again?"

"'Semi-not evil'?" Wu questioned confused until Lloyd explained,

"Aeria and Morro grew up on the streets together until she was taken from him and spent her life around criminals, including Ronin, she's had a rough life and it made her a little..."

"Rough?"

"I guess, but she's actually not that bad once you get to know her." Lloyd rubbed his arm a bit as he looked down and a corner of his mouth lifted in a tiny, shy smile. Misako caught on to the action and smiled a bit as well before Zane told everyone,

"We must find her now, Pythor cornered her at the amusement park to get into her head and make her turn against us so he could catch her while she's at her most vulnerable."

"Yeah, but where would we even start looking? She knows Airjitzu and has been able to stay off the radar for years in hiding where she knows she won't be found." Jay asked impatiently.

"Let's get to the computer room and try to rule out where she wouldn't be so we might be able to figure out where she would be." Nya planned out and everyone but Lloyd followed her as he stayed out to watch the clouds pass overhead from the edge of the deck.

"What's wrong, son?" Misako came up next to him and placed a hand on his shoulder.

"I feel... responsible for Aeria leaving..."

"Why's that?"

"We all agreed to not tell her about what we knew about her brother, even when we saw how broken she was over it, because we thought that she wouldn't be able to handle the information. Now, I just feel that holding that information back is exactly what drove her away and it wasn't really for her sake, but for ours. We weren't able to handle the fact that she's related to a past enemy and it made us paranoid that she would become like him."

"Lloyd, at one point or another, we lie to those we care about because we feel it would be best to not hurt them and this lesson is often learned the hard way," Misako sighed before continuing, "while the truth may hurt for a little while, a lie can hurt someone for the rest of their lives."

"So you're saying she might never forgive us?"

"I'm saying that maybe giving her a chance to fully process the truth, the whole truth, will be what's best for her. She may be angry now, but, given the time, she may just surprise you." Misako brushed some hair away from Lloyd's eyes before asking,

"Do you really like this girl?" making Lloyd pull away at that,

"What?! I already told them she's not my girlfriend!" Lloyd buried his face in his hands to prevent his mother from seeing his bright red face.

"A mother knows, Lloyd." Misako told him as he unburied his face and looked at her, "So, what is it about her that you like?" Lloyd moaned in his mouth a bit before admitting,

"Well, she seems a little rough around the edges, at first glance, but once you gain her trust, she's actually really nice, thoughtful, creative, and really protective of us, in her own way."

"How so?"

"She didn't want to come with us to the amusement park at first because she was afraid of her evil side hurting us or any other people while we were there."

"Sounds like she learned to trust you and the others if she risked going after you talked to her."

"How do you know about that?"

"I didn't, until now." Misako smiled as Lloyd realized he just confirmed her suspicion and let out another groan.

"Whatever, I just want to find her before Pythor does." Lloyd pushed away from the edge as he and his mother went to join the others in the computer room. Before either even set foot in the room, they could hear the arguing,

"She could've gone back to Tozmachi." Jay suggested.

"She knows that would be the first place we'd check." Cole argued against it.

" _Or_ maybe that's what she would want us to think to be the perfect place to hide!"

"Have we made _any_ progress on figuring out where Aeria might be hiding?" Lloyd asked with concern.

"Not really. Like Jay said; she's had too much experience in hiding under the radar for long periods of time, so we don't know where we should start looking." Nya told him as she gestured to the red pins on the map labeled with question marks.

"I think I might know how we could find her." Xia spoke up from where she was waking up where Zane put her down.

"Xia, you must rest." Zane came over and tried to lay her back down, but she stubbornly got up and wobbled a little on her legs before continuing,

"If I had something of great emotional value to her, then maybe I could scry her location."

"Hold on, I think she might have left her memory box behind." Lloyd ran to Aeria's room and grabbed the box that still had the photo, paper crane, and carved stone from the floor.

He was about to run back out when he saw the purple origami iris Aeria had given him on the floor from when it had been blown out of his hand.

He picked it up and saw that she had stepped on it as her angry voice came echoing back at him,

 _I stood up for you guys against Pythor! I told him you'd never lie to me like that and I was actually dumb enough to_ believe _it!_

He winced at the mental yelling before pocketing it and made it back to the others with the box and photo in hand.

"Is that a sliding lock puzzle box?" Wu asked as he stroked his beard thoughtfully.

"Yep, " Lloyd answered.

"And a Chronostone?"

"A what?" Cole asked as Lloyd held up the stone in question.

"It's a powerful artifact that protects whoever owns it one time in a crucial moment and its powers aren't reactivated until it changes hands."

"That might explain how she got here from the past." Nya realized before Lloyd put the stone back in the box and held it out to Xia.

She took it in her hands and closed her eyes as a light purple aura edged with black surrounded her hands and the box. In her mind's eye, she saw a crumpled up map with a bright red X on it before the vision dissipated.

"Lloyd, did Aeria ever mention anything about a map to you?" Xia asked Lloyd urgently as she put the box down and went to the computer.

"No, but, in the box, there was a drawn map that led to a spot right here." Lloyd tapped the screen and Xia put a digital pin on the spot.

"Where is that, and why would she go there?" Cole questioned.

"My guess is it's somewhere special for her and her brother to have marked down where it was and put it in the box." Nya hypothesized.

"Then we need to get there as fast as we can before it's too late." Lloyd declared and Xia set the destination in as they set course.

 _With Aeria_

Aeria was in the Howling Woods, as she and her brother had called it and named it on the map she kept clutched in her hand. She sat at the base of a tree that was bare of any leaves as the wind blew gently through the branches and she pulled her knees up to her chest and cried into them.

 _ **"Do not show weakness!"**_ She heard Darkstorm's raspy voice in her head as she wiped away her tears.

"Just leave me alone..." Aeria grumbled to the voice as she wiped her tears away and looked at the map in her hand before folding it up and putting it into her jacket pocket, just realizing then that she didn't grab the photo or her memory box.

 _ **"You should be furious, not sorrowful! Your so-called**_ **friends** _**just lied to you about your brother-"**_

"You don't think I know that!" Aeria yelled back angrily as she felt Darkstorm getting stronger, feeding off her rage for strength.

"Oh sorry to intrude on your little... internal debate." Aeria heard a new voice that wasn't inside her head, but nearby and scrambled to her feet.

"Pythor?!" The white and purple scaled serpent came into view from behind another tree, "Can't you get it through your thick skull that I'm _not_ going to help you?" Aeria yelled at him as she readied herself to use Spinjitzu.

"I only tried to warn you, they never _really_ believed that you were one of them." Pythor looked mournful, but Aeria saw past his charade.

"I don't care what you say, I'm not helping you with whatever it is you need Darkstorm to do." Aeria kept a hand hidden behind her back as it formed a dark sphere while Pythor laughed mockingly,

"Darkstorm? Is _that_ what you're calling her now?"

"Hey, I didn't name her, she named herself." Aeria responded back pointedly before firing the sphere at Pythor, barely missing his head.

She was preparing another sphere when she felt her arms become clamped to her sides and she felt her powers vanish from inside of her.

"Hey what the-?" Aeria struggled against the red and black metal creature that kept her captured as she tried to rip her arms from it, but was unsuccessful.

"Good luck with that." Pythor came back over to her chuckling, "This is the same creature I used to contain the legendary _Golden Ninja_ , so holding you wouldn't be an issue."

"Well, I may be no _Golden Ninja_ ," Aeria mimicked Pythor's tone, "but I don't need to be." She ran up the side of a tree and was about to jump to another tree branch when the creature unraveled its head enough to bite down on her arm.

"Aagh!" Aeria fell down from the branch she was on and landed on her back as her vision was becoming hazy and her breathing shallow and strained.

"What..." She tried to gasp from having the wind knocked out of her after her fall.

"I forgot to mention that I made a little adjustment to make it easier to incapacitate you." Pythor's smirking face came into view as he told her, just before her vision went dark,

"As you said before, 'say goodnight'..."


	25. Too Late

3rd Person POV with the Ninja

"Uh, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but uh-" Jay started to say before Nya interrupted with,

"She's not here."

They had arrived in the woods where Aeria's map pointed to, but there was no one to be seen for miles around.

"Look around for anything that could have pointed to her being here and where she might have gone." Xia told everyone before they all split up to cover more ground.

Lloyd was walking around with the origami iris in his hand, thinking about how Aeria was going to react to seeing them again.

Would she be happy to see them, would she be on Pythor's side for betraying her trust, or-

Lloyd's thought was interrupted after he tripped on something and landed on his face in the dirt. After gathering his bearings, and the iris after it had fallen from his hand in the fall, he saw that he tripped on a segment of red and black metal that was eerily familiar.

"Uh, guys!" Lloyd picked up the segment and brought it over to the others.

"What is that?" Cole questioned.

"That's just been your line of the day, has no one else noticed that?" Nya noted before Cole gave her a half-lidded gaze.

"Umm, it looks like a piece of scrap metal if you ask me." Kai interjected.

"I can concur with that obvious statement." Jay stated in a matter-of-factly voice, snickering silently until Nya gave him a look and he abruptly stopped after complaining,

"Oh and _you_ get to make a joke?"

"It's not a piece of scrap metal, it's a piece of the same device that Pythor used on me a while back during the whole Digital Overlord situation to prevent me from using my powers, but this one's different." Lloyd explained to them as he showed them a spike that jutted out from the side.

"But if that's here, where Aeria had last been..." Nya started.

"Then, Pythor got to her before we could and he restrained her with that snake thing that suppressed my powers before."

"But that does not give us any clue as to where they could be." Xia told them discouragingly.

"Not necessarily." Misako spoke through their comms and the team listened.

"There have been reports of an unnatural wind storm circling over the Lost City of Ouroboros that just vanished a minute ago." Wu continued.

"If I had to take a guess, that's where Pythor is keeping Aeria and she's either putting up a fight or signaling to us her location." Misako finished.

"Then let's hurry before-" Kai was cut off when Xia seized her head and let out a scream, falling to her knees as Zane tried to pick her up, but she writhed around in his hold like she was in pain.

"What is it, sister?" Zane asked urgently after PIXAL scanned her, telling him that she was physically unharmed.

"The balance between good and evil is shifting within Aeria, I can feel it." Xia stopped moving around, but she suddenly seemed tired and weak as she held the memory box in her hands, "She feels very weak now, like her life force is being drained from her."

"She must be dowsing her location and her current condition." Zane told them as he took the box from his sister's hands and let her fall asleep in his arms from over exhausting her powers.

"We have to hurry then," Lloyd declared as he took the box from Zane, "Pythor's trying to take her powers from her and because she has two of them, it could kill her."

"Then, let's go!" Nya pushed a button on a remote and the Destiny's Bounty appeared overhead as the anchor dropped to let them climb onto the deck of the ship.

 _Hold on Aeria, we're coming..._ Lloyd thought to himself as they took off for Ouroboros.

 _In Ouroboros a few minutes before_

"Let me out!" Aeria pounded her fist on the glass of the same chamber that was used to drain Lloyd of his Golden Power.

The glass started to crack under the force of her darkness/anger-boosted strength until Pythor hit a button that sent an electric shock to the inside of the chamber from the Electrocobrai tank on its side.

"I wouldn't try that again if I were you." Pythor warned her as Aeria fell to her knees and hands with some sparks flickering on her, even as she stood back up and went back to banging weakly on the glass.

"I'm never going to help you, so just..." Aeria's threat faltered as Pythor ignored her and turned the chamber on.

Instantly, Aeria felt her energy being sapped away from her as a swirl of dark purple and black surrounded her like a tornado and the energy went toward the being inside the coffin outside of the chamber. All while she felt her powers leave her and she looked to her hands as she formed a sphere in her hands that dissipated seconds after being formed.

"You said you wouldn't help me, " Pythor went up to the glass where Aeria had her fists while on her knees from the energy drain, "you never said anything about Darkstorm not helping me."

"Uh, I'm...pretty sure I...did..." Her voice faltered with every word until she completely sank to the floor on her side and lost consciousness for the second time that day.

"Hmm, she went down easier than I thought." Pythor mused to himself as the screen over the coffin beeped to indicate that the energy transfer had been completed. Pressing another button on the console, the doors to the coffin opened and the form inside stepped out from the coffin to fall to one knee.

Darkstorm looked exactly like Aeria, but with an Overlord makeover. Her long pitch-black hair had traces of light and dark purple in it, dark ashy gray skin, and her outfit consisted of a light purple cape over silver armored clothes. Both of her eyes opened to reveal orange and red-stained orbs and her pointed teeth showed through a lipless grin as Darkstorm turned to look at Pythor,

 _ **"It's about time..."**_


	26. The Darkness Comes

3rd Person POV

"The storm's gone, he did it..." Lloyd whispered to himself as we saw Ouroboros come into view from the deck and the wind storm that had been swirling above it had died down.

"Look!" Nya pointed over the edge to the two figures that were exiting the central base, "There's Pythor, but I don't recognize the other person with him."

"It appears to be Aeria, but her appearance has significantly changed." Zane alerted the others after PIXAL used their enhanced sight to look closer.

"That's not Aeria..." Lloyd told the others after he looked through the telescope to see that the other figure did look like Aeria, but he could just tell that it wasn't the real her.

"Lloyd is correct," Xia came up to the edge as she extended her hand over the edge with her eyes closed, concentrating on her powers, "Pythor has managed to extract the Overlord's essence, or as we know them as, Darkstorm, from Aeria, as well as her abilities over the wind, and inserted them into another created being."

"Then, where's Aeria?" Nya asked worriedly.

"I cannot sense her at the moment." Xia looked back at them with a despairing looking facial expression, "This worries me…"

"Uh, guys? We got incoming!" Cole yelled as Darkstorm used the wind to throw the Bounty around in the air and launched herself onto the deck as Pythor got into a police helicopter. She stayed bent down on one knee with her head bowed down, until Lloyd slowly approached her and her head snapped up to look at me with her dark, piercing glare.

"What have you and Pythor done to Aeria?" Lloyd demanded to know and Darkstorm just grinned with malice before rasping out,

 _ **"I'd be more worried about yourselves right now..."**_ She raised a fist up and a dark sphere formed around it. The ninja realized a split-second too late what she was going to do and Lloyd tried to reach out a hand to fire an energy sphere at her, but was too late.

The sphere spread out in pulsing waves over the deck all over the ship and blew out the engines with an explosion in each one. The ship started to shake uncontrollably again as Misako and Wu shouted over the PA system that they were trying to land them safely when Darkstorm started to fly over, pausing to hang off the side of the mast as she yelled down to the ninja, to Lloyd in particular,

 _ **"You're too late for her anyway!"**_

Before taking off with a maniacal laugh as the helicopter flew by with Pythor inside and Darkstorm followed him from behind in the direction of Ninjago City.

Lloyd's mind was swirling with thoughts of what Darkstorm meant by being "too late" for Aeria, but was brought out of his thoughts when Wu spoke through the speakers again with urgency,

"Brace yourselves!"

Seconds later, the Bounty managed to avoid the buildings of Ouroboros, but still landed roughly towards the center of the ruins on its side.

"Is everyone still alive?" Kai called out as he dragged himself up from the side of the ship where he had clung for his life a few seconds ago.

"Haha Kai..." Cole deadpanned as he crossed his arms.

"Sorry, Cole."

"Yeah, aside from a few scrapes and bruises from the rest of us, we're all OK." Nya told us as she helped Misako and Wu out of the ship from the, now sideways, door.

"The thrusters were shut down and are damaged, but they can be fixed." Wu assured everyone.

"However, it will take some time to do so." Misako told everyone as she pulled out Nya's toolbox from the doorway and the two along with Jay made it over to the left ruined thruster while Zane and Xia went to fix the right one.

"Lloyd, you go check to see if Aeria's in there, we'll fix the thrusters so that we can get to Ninjago City as soon as possible to stop whatever Pythor and Darkstorm have planned." Kai told Lloyd as he placed a hand on his shoulder with a determined look that Lloyd returned with a nod before running to the central base.

 _Short Time Skip_

It was completely dark inside the base until Lloyd formed an energy sphere in his hand to light the place up and he spotted a switch on the wall that turned on the lights.

As soon as he did, he could see that the walls were plastered with maps of Ninjago City with several places circled in red marker with question marks written next to them, blueprints for the mechanical body of Darkstorm, some metal parts and tools lying around a full crate, and more blueprints to reconstruct and modify the chamber that was used to drain Lloyd's Golden Power.

"That's how Pythor took Aeria's powers and used them to power an entirely different being..." Lloyd whispered to himself as he continued to look at all the blueprints.

Then, he saw that, on one of the various maps in the room, there was a large red circle sticker with a penned X on it at the center of Ninjago City where Borg Tower was located and realized that that must be where Pythor and Darkstorm were headed.

Lloyd took the map off the wall when some popping noises sounded from another room in the base. Rolling up the map and holstering it on his gi's belt, he ran in the direction of the noise and was horrified with what he saw.

The same power extraction chamber from before, with the new changes that Pythor added in, was being powered by a small tank of Electrocobrai. Inside, Aeria was curled up on the floor with her back facing the glass of the door to the chamber and he could see small sparks of electricity jolting off of her as well as up from the metal floor.

"Aeria!"

Rushing over to her, Lloyd pounded his hands on the glass to get her attention, but she wasn't moving at all which made him even more scared.

After yanking the power switch off to stop the electric currents from zapping Aeria, he found a large red button to open the chamber door and practically punched it with his fist to rush inside.

Kneeling down next to Aeria, Lloyd turned her over and she stiffly uncurled from her position, barely breathing, but still alive.

"Come on, let's get you outta here…"

Carefully, he picked her up, one arm supporting her back and the other holding up her legs and managed to carry her outside and back to the Bounty.

"Lloyd?" Misako and Wu and came running up to Lloyd with concern clear on their faces.

"Aeria!" Nya ran over with some soot on her face from the engines.

"Is she gonna be OK?" Lloyd asked worriedly.

"She is extremely weak and her powers have been fully drained, but she should live," Wu assured them as he put a hand on Aeria's forehead, "She should rest now if she is going to wake soon to aid us in our battle against her counterpart."

"Yeah..." Lloyd agreed as he and his mother started to walk back towards the Bounty.

"So, this is Aeria?" Misako asked Lloyd with a smile as they boarded the uprighted ship to get to Aeria's room.

"Yeah, I just hope she doesn't lash out at us again when she comes to..." Lloyd told her as he put Aeria down on her bed and they left the room, closing the door behind them and standing outside the door.

"As I told you before, give her time..."

"Which, unfortunately, we may not have a lot of..."


	27. Heart Bonds

Lloyd's POV

"I found this map in Pythor's lab where he and Darkstorm are planning to attack Ninjago City from." I pulled out the map from my gi and laid it on the table, pointing to the little red sticker that was stuck onto it.

"Borg Tower?" Nya questioned with an eyebrow raised.

"That would appear to be the most logical choice. Using Aeria's stolen wind abilities combined with the Overlord's power in Darkstorm's form, they could create a massive storm that would destroy the city in one fatal blow." Xia announced to everyone in a grave tone.

"That... doesn't sound too good." Kai grimaced.

"It sounds too easy, _that's_ what it sounds like..." Everyone turned to see Aeria leaning against the doorway with sweat beading on her forehead as she held her stomach in pain with one arm and the other was being used to brush her bangs away from her previously infected eye, that now looked empty and gray, before bracing herself against the doorway.

"Aeria!" I ran over to her as she fell to her knees, breathing shallow, and I helped her back onto her feet as she walked over to the table.

"You need to rest, your body still has not recovered from having your powers drained." Zane told her, but Aeria seemed bent on staying in the room as she straightened up in her seat, still holding her stomach.

"Come on, doesn't this plan seem a little too easy, a little too out in the open? Pythor is a literal snake, his plans have plans." Aeria banged her fist on the map on the table, making us all jump in surprise, "He's manipulating you all to keep you out of his way so he and Darkstorm can destroy you all!"

Aeria slumped down over the table, huffing quietly, clearly exhausted by her shouting and I put a hand on her arm to keep her from yelling anymore.

"You need to get some rest." I told her, trying to lift her up to lead her back to her room.

"No, what you _need_ to do is... find... a new angle..." Aeria collapsed to the ground, unmoving and silent.

"Aeria!" I kneeled down next to her and tried to grab her arm again, but I was shocked with a bolt of purple energy.

"What the heck is happening?!" Jay exclaimed before diving behind a chair as some more purple sparks came off of her.

"It seems the Dark Matter has bonded with her more deeply than previously expected." Xia backed away from us in Zane's arms as she held her head in pain.

"So she's going through some kind of withdrawal since it was the Dark Matter that bonded to her and not the reverse?" Nya elaborated on Xia's statement.

"Well, we have to do something, she's burning up, literally." Cole pointed to the fizzling sparks that set off small fires on the wooden floor that Zane quickly iced out with one hand as the other hand was holding Xia in a half-hug.

"Mom, can't you use that gemstone you found that could contain the Overlord's powers in a person?" I asked her as she knelt down across from me along with Master Wu.

"No, I'm afraid we cannot. If we attempt to use it on her while only a small part of his power is still inside of her, we have no idea what kind of effects there would be on her, mentally and physically."

"Or maybe we can..." Master Wu muttered out loud as he stroked his beard.

"We can what?" Nya asked worriedly.

"We may be able to neutralize the Dark Matter inside of her for a short amount of time if Lloyd draws out the Golden Power inside the gemstone and puts its energy inside of her, hence the prophecy." Wu added the last bit of his sentence after a small pause.

"What do you mean 'hence the prophecy', there was nothing in there about this?!" Jay exclaimed poking his head out from under the table where he had dove down.

"The last few lines of the prophecy? I thought you said you had read it." Wu turned to me with an eyebrow raised.

"We did, but the last few lines were torn off from the scroll, so we didn't know what the rest of it said."

"I thought I put the rest back on after it got torn..." Wu muttered to himself before continuing with, "The rest of that prophecy stated-

And if to the removed darkness they had not succumbed

Then bound by light to the Golden one they loved

Would save their heart from the darkest blood

And protect ones cared for from the eclipsed bud. The 'Golden one they loved' refers to Lloyd as I am now realizing." Wu grinned a little and the blush on my face intensified by a hundred.

"Oh come on, I keep telling you guys she's _not_ my girlfriend."

"Maybe not yet, but maybe in time..." Wu told me sagely.

"But, then, what do the other lines of the prophecy mean?" Kai questioned as he scratched his head thoughtfully.

"The 'darkest blood' would have to be the Dark Matter that is still inside of her, connecting her to Darkstorm." Xia started and Nya continued with,

"I'm willing to bet that the 'eclipsed bud' is Darkstorm since she's a manifestation of the Overlord and his powers."

"Please hand me the stone already so I can do this before the ship goes down in flames." I interrupted urgently while holding out my hand for the gemstone. My mom stood up, went over to Cole who handed her the satchel that contained the stone and she handed it to me, whispering in my ear,

"You don't have to be ashamed, just go with what your heart feels." She referred to my earlier embarrassment and smiled at the end of her sentence. I looked down in thought before I cupped my hands around the stone and concentrated on its Golden Energy.

When I did, I felt a warmth around me as the Golden Energy came out in small, thin wisps of light that I directed with one hand to Aeria's forehead. When it hit her forehead, I saw wisps of light spread out as some Dark Matter arose and spread out in the form of cracks of purple and black that dissipated as soon as the light touched them. When the dark cracks had almost fully faded, I stopped pulling out Golden Energy and watched Aeria to see if she would come to.

"W-what happened?" She asked groggily and turned to me with worry in her eyes, her previously infected one less dark than usual, looking semi-normal, and not so empty anymore.

"You are still connected to the Dark Matter that infected you," Wu answered as he stepped forward, slurping away at a cup of tea before continuing, "However, we may be able to use this to our advantage."

"What the heck is he talking about and, better question, who are those two?" Aeria directed to me again motioning with her head to Master Wu and my mom.

"This is our Master Wu and Lloyd's mom Misako." Kai answered for me when I hesitated to do so myself.

"And I believe what Wu means to say is that if you're still connected to the Dark Matter that Darkstorm is fueled by, there is a chance that you can take back control over her and stop whatever Pythor has planned." My mom told Aeria as I helped her back onto her feet.

"That is... if you're up to it." Wu added in a gravelly tone.

"The good news is, once you take back control of her, we have a way to contain her and her powers with this." I told Aeria as I held out the gemstone in my hand, "It's how we're preventing another Dark Matter withdrawal in you right now."

"Ok, I'm gonna be honest when I say I only understood a few things out of all that, but I think I get the general gist of it." Aeria told us with uncertainty clear on her face.

"Before you passed out you told us that we need to find a 'new angle' involving Pythor's plan, what did you mean by that?" Nya asked Aeria.

"I was feeling kind of out of it after that draining process, but, right as I was waking up from whatever that snake device put in me when it bit me, I heard him and Darkstorm discussing how to 'throw those color-coded fools off of the primary target'." Aeria mimicked Pythor's voice, making all of us giggle for a few seconds before getting serious again.

"That _does_ sound like something Pythor would do." Cole admitted as he phased out from the wall where he had been hiding.

"Yeah, and your impersonation of him was on point." Jay made a pinching motion with his hand.

"Were you able to find out a location?" Zane queried.

"No, he was about to spill the new location when Darkstorm sensed that I was awake and stopped him from saying anything else, I'm sorry guys..." Aeria trailed off with remorse.

"It'll be ok," I assured Aeria as I put my hand on her shoulder, "For now, we should get to Ninjago City as soon as possible and, when we get there, we'll figure out what to do next."

"Alright..." Aeria whispered as she smiled softly and looked me in the eyes and I smiled back when,

"Then what are we waiting for?!" Jay exclaimed, ruining the moment between me and Aeria, " We need to get this ship moving!"

"I'm on it." Xia announced as she went to the main computer to plot the course to Ninjago City and to activate the boosters.

"We're coming for you, Pythor, Darkstorm..." I hear Aeria mutter to herself as the ship sped off toward the city.


	28. Gearing Up

Aeria's POV

As the city of Ninjago came into sight from where I was standing on the deck, I leaned on the rail edge looking at the ground as we flew over it.

I was thinking about what I had told the ninja, about finding a new angle.

 _What could I have meant by that...?_ I wondered to myself before noticing that the wind was breezing through my hair, but it felt…emptier than it did before so I held my hand up to try and summon some of my powers, only to come up empty as well.

I let my hand drop and dangle over the rail when Lloyd came over to me and leaned on the rail with his arms crossed. I looked away from him as I felt my face start to heat up, but I couldn't tell if it was because I was happy or angry to see him.

"Listen, I uh..." Lloyd started to say, but he trailed off before he took a deep breath and started again, "I know that what we did was wrong and unforgivable, but we really did want to protect you from the truth."

"As I told you before, I don't need protecting..." I muttered, "I just don't understand why you guys didn't tell me about my brother when you knew how much it hurt for me to not know what happened to him."

"And I promise, when this is all over, I will tell you _everything_ I know about your brother." Lloyd put a hand on my arm that was dangling over the edge.

"Assuming we make it to the end of this battle..."

"We will. I know you don't really believe this yet, but you're not alone and you never will be again."

I turn to look Lloyd in the eyes and see that he's being genuine and any remaining hate I had for him and his team seemed to slowly evaporate from me and was replaced with a new feeling that was new to me since when Darkstorm was a part of me, all I felt all the time was anger and hatred for everyone and everything around me.

"I guess you'll be wanting these back then." Lloyd broke the moment when he pulled out my puzzle box and the paper iris I made. I took the box, but closed his hand around the iris to show that he could keep it and gave him a small smile.

"Hey, I've been meaning to ask, why give me an iris?" Lloyd questioned and I was considering not telling him about the dream, but decided to try trusting him again.

"The first night I stayed here, I..." I struggled to decide how I was going to phrase my explanation before just starting from the beginning, "After I got these powers, I started having the same nightmare every single night; running from this darkness in a lifeless forest, but the first night I stayed here, something… changed… it was like the darkness lifted and, just for a few moments, life started to come back, starting with the iris… Then, it came back, twice as powerful and almost overtook me… I still have no idea why."

"I think I do." I looked at him confused until he explained, "I came in to check on you, but you were already asleep and it looked like you were having a nightmare and when I held your hand, I think I got pulled into your dream or something, because I saw you running from that darkness and I let go afterwards."

The space between me and Lloyd was starting to close as he brought me into a hug and I returned the hug before we heard some giggling behind us. When we turned around, we saw Nya and Lloyd's mom behind us as well as the rest of the team.

"And yet you keep trying to argue she's not your girlfriend." Jay snickered a bit.

"You know what, I'm over it. Even though we should really be focusing on where we're going to start our search for Pythor." Lloyd sighed tiredly.

"I've been thinking about what I told you guys before I passed out," I started gaining their attention and motioning to go inside around the table with the map on it, "Another way that Pythor and Darkstorm would be able to take out Ninjago is if they headed for the old abandoned mine shaft that is near the mountain at the edge of Ninjago." I pointed to the mountain in question on the map.

"You mean Mount Fragment?" Misako questioned.

"Yep, that's the one."

"Why's it called Mount Fragment?" Lloyd asked, confused.

"Wasn't that place shut down for almost tunneling right through the center of the mountain?" Cole asked nervously.

"Correct." Zane verified straightforwardly as Xia pulled up the schematic for the mineshaft on the main computer.

"Any further digging would have resulted in the collapse of the mountain, therefore it was shut down as a safety precaution." Xia added on to her brother's explanation as the picture started to show a small animation of the digging furthering and the mountain crumbling.

"If Darkstorm can manage to take out the supports that are keeping the mountain from collapsing in on itself, break the mountain itself apart from within the tunnel, and blow the pieces of the mountain, they would rain down on Ninjago like a hailstorm but worse."

"So they wouldn't be hitting the city from above or below, but right behind it..." Nya figured out and grimaced silently.

"Tons of people would be forced to leave the city..." Jay continued the thought.

"Then we must stop them from accomplishing that plan." Wu told the ninja before looking at me, "Are you willing to work with the ninja in order to stop them?"

I hesitated to answer that question, looking at each of the ninja before looking at my hand, clenching it, and answered with determination.

"Yes."

 _Time Skip to Mount Fragment_

"We're here." Cole pointed out before he and the team started to gear up for the mission ahead.

"Here," Nya tossed something to me, my violet gi, "You might need that." She smiled at me before grabbing her spear.

I looked down at the uniform before pulling it on over my clothes and retrieving my bow from the weapons rack. I was securing a quiver of arrows onto my back when Xia and Nya came up to me with a commlink in Nya's hand and a pendant with a purple and gold stone hanging on a silver chain in Xia's hand.

"Keep this commlink with you to keep in touch with the rest of the team." Nya told me as she gave it to me and I secured it into my ear.

"Once you get Darkstorm back inside of you, put this pendant on to keep her and her powers at bay." I pocketed the pendant when a thought came to mind,

"Why can't we just destroy Darkstorm or her powers at least?"

"I'm afraid it doesn't work that way," Wu began as he appeared behind us surprising us, "You cannot have one without the other, much how in life you will always have obstacles, but it depends on what you do to overcome them that matters the most, not whether those obstacles are there or not."

I was left speechless as his words echoed in my mind until Jay broke the silence with,

"Now is really not the time for your riddles and needlessly confusing metaphors!"

"Let's go already, we don't have a lot of time from the look of it." Cole pointed off into the distance where more storm clouds were circling above the peak of the mountain and streaks of purple were seen in the clouds.

We all grabbed and strapped on parachute packs before standing on the edge of the Bounty's railing all together, looking to each other and I whispered,

"Here we go..." and we all jumped.


	29. The Beginning of the End

Aeria's POV

The wind rushing through my hair, I forgot, for just a few seconds, that my powers were gone and the Call was gone from my mind with them. After the quick realization, I reached over and pulled the cord to open the parachute, slowing my descent toward the edge of the cliff where the opening of the mines was located.

"Follow me!" I called out to the others as I pulled my parachute to correct the path of my descent toward the entrance.

"You can't be serious!" Cole yelled out as his hands started to phase through his parachute controls.

"Can someone get to Cole before he goes off course?" Lloyd asked through the comms as the wind started to pick up, drowning out anything anyone said.

"I got'im." Kai responded before gliding over to Cole to help him.

"Approaching the mine entrance." Zane announced before Xia added,

"10 feet and closing."

In a few seconds, everyone managed to land on the cliff, albeit a bit off-balance since the gales were starting to blow even harsher in the direction of Ninjago.

"How're the people doing down below?" Nya asked through the comms to the Bounty.

"The people have started an emergency evacuation, but if the winds continue at this pace, they won't be able to get out in time." Misako reported from her end.

"Then we better hurry and stop the snake and dark side before that happens." I growled menacingly before pulling an arrow out from my quiver and readying it in my bow as we all walked through the entrance to the mine into the darkness below.

"Everyone, stay close, once we get close enough to the center of the mountain, they're gonna have the advantage of an ambush." Lloyd warned the others as we followed the path of dimly lit torches down the old tunnels.

I was surveying the area in front of us, ready to loose an arrow at any moment when I felt a distinctive chill down my spine, like a part of me was just restrained with chains. The chill sharpened and spread to my previously infected eye to the point where I weakly loosed my arrow to clutch my eye while dropping down to one knee.

"Aeria!" Lloyd was by my side within seconds before I held a hand up to assure him that I was alright.

"Something's wrong, it's like part of me is being chained down." I told Lloyd as I got back up and went to pull my arrow out of the wall it buried itself into.

"Like that's not ominous…" Jay cowered down a bit as he looked around the dark area in slight fear.

"It is possible that Aeria is not the only one feeling that ominosity." Zane referred to Xia who looked like she was on the verge of a splitting headache.

"Well, what did you expect when you meddle around in the dark?" An echo sounded from all around them in a hissing manner.

"Pythor… Show yourself you slithering _coward_!" I dared him as we all circled up with our backs to each other to prepare to face him from any direction.

"Gladly…" Pythor slithered out from behind a withering pillar of wood that was supporting the tunnel frame structure.

"Oh boy, that's not good." Cole noted from Pythor's position.

"Indeed, you've all just wandered right into your _tomb_." Pythor swiftly cut the pillar using his tail and, right after he did so, the frame burst apart in splintering mass, causing the whole tunnel to start to collapse.

"Toodle-oo." Pythor retreated further into the tunnel in a quick white streak.

"Quickly, after him!" I ran forward dodging and hitting away all the falling pieces of rock that threatened to bury us until I managed to get through to an open cavern-like area.

"Piece of cake right guys?" I turned to see if the others made it out and I didn't see any of them behind me.

"Guys? Guys!" I ran up to the pile of crumbled rocks and dirt, hitting it with all my might before I put my ear next to it to hear someone on the other side.

"Aeria? You alright?" Lloyd's voice came through faintly.

"Yeah, I thought you guys were right behind me." I told him before I started trying to move some boulders out of the way, assuring him, "Hold on, I'll find a way to get you guys through."

"You mean 'we'?" Cole's voice sounded from right next to me and I jumped to see he managed to phase through the rubble.

"Took you long enough." I snarked while crossing my arms.

"Hey going through solid objects is not as easy as it sounds." Cole responded indignantly before his eyes were drawn to a jackhammer that was laying on the ground nearby.

"If I possess that jackhammer, maybe I'll be able to get through to the others." Cole ran over to the tool and dissipated into it in a flurry of green smoke before it levitated off the ground and started chipping away at the wall of rubble between us and the rest of our friends.

 _ **Help… me…**_ I heard the same twisted voice of mine from inside my mind coming from further into the cavern.

"Cole, did you hear that?" The jackhammer paused long enough to make a shaking motion before I readied an arrow and told him,

"Keep diggin', I'll check it out."

A few minutes of stealthy stalking down the tunnel later led me to what looked like a fighting arena where a tube chamber similar to the one Pythor used to drain my powers stood at the far end.

Inside was a mass of glowing purple and smoky black swirled around inside like a storm and looked to be powering a machine right next to it.

"What the heck...?" I lowered my bow long enough to look around at the painted walls and racks of mining tools lined up against the wall.

"Welcome to your doom..."

"Pythor..." I whispered before readying another arrow and turning around to face the white-scaled snake as he stood behind me with a smirk on his face.

"And so the end comes as it began, just the two of us fighting to determine once and for all who the better wielder of darkness will be."

"Save your little speech, I want to know why you went through so much trouble to get Darkstorm out if she's not gonna be fighting _with_ you _against_ me."

"Simple, I want to prove once and for all that _I_ am the only one with the will to wield the powers of the Overlord, once I defeat you, all of you and her power will become mine, free to use against the very beings who imprisoned me all those decades ago." Pythor picked up a long steel pole from the pile of tools that lay discarded on the floor and I readied an arrow before my tough facade fell and I burst out laughing.

" _What_ is so funny?!" Pythor demanded to know.

"All of this." I gestured around me before starting to explain, "Y'know the old me would have gladly accepted a one on one challenge, ever since I lost my brother, gained those dark powers, and found myself alone in the world, I was so afraid of letting my dark side take control of me and hurt those I cared about, I thought the best way to keep everyone safe would be to go it alone."

The two of us started circling around each other carefully as I continued my speech,

"So I shut the world out, never letting anyone in for fear they would get hurt because of me, but you know what, I realized something when I met my team, my _friends_..."

I restrung my arrow and loosed it in the direction of the enclosure, breaking the glass in a swift motion.

"I never have to be alone again..." I dropped my bow to the ground as the clouded mass of darkness swirled around me and I put my arms up as I let it engulf me. I felt the cold enter my body, but it didn't scare me as I let the wind spiral around me. I could feel the full force of Darkstorm taking over as my vision fully went purple and red as her voice sounded out from my mouth,

" _ **And you're going to regret ever messing with us."**_

"Us?"

"That's right, us!" Lloyd's voice filled the cavern as he and the others appeared in the entrance of the cavern, weapons raised and Lloyd's hands surrounded in a golden light.

"Finally realized you didn't have to do everything by yourself did we?" Nya asked from where she stood with her spear raised.

"Thanks for waiting for the rest of us before you got the butt-kicking started." Jay joked as Cole rolled his eyes in response.

"A nice gesture, but one I'm afraid made in vain." Pythor quickly slithered over to the chamber and threw a lever on it down. Suddenly, the ground around them started to shake again, but with more intensity this time.

"Don't you think I would've prepared a back-up plan in case the first one didn't work out? I still stole enough power from Darkstorm to blow the top of this mountain off. It may not seem like much, but the impact would be enough to still destroy some of the city."

3rd Person POV

The roof started to collapse around them and as soon as Dark Aeria leaped away to avoid it, she lost sight of Pythor within the rapidly crumbling mountain top.

"We need to get out of here now!" Lloyd directed the others to the exit, but Dark Aeria stayed in place as she began a mental conversation with her other half in the span of a few seconds.

 _He tried to use you against your will, didn't he?_

 _ **Yes… I'm all for causing havoc and whatever else but I'd rather do it on my own terms.**_

 _I don't think that's why you called out to me, I think a small part of you knows that we don't have to be on the side of darkness and destruction._

 _ **That's not my gig OK? I don't have a choice, it's literally in my nature to be destructive. No amount of emotional friendships will ever be enough to keep people safe from me...**_

 _Just the fact that you're considering other peoples' feelings is proof that you_ do _have a choice. You may have been created out of pure evil, but that doesn't determine what you choose to do once it loses its control over you._

There was a brief pause before Darkstorm spoke again,

 _ **Are you gonna stand here sounding like sensitive fools or are we gonna save everyone from that crisis?**_

 _Thought you'd never ask._

With a light smirk, Aeria regained some control as one of her eyes went back to normal and she turned to Lloyd who was still trying to get his team out, but stopped when he saw that Aeria was falling behind.

"Aeria, come on we have to get out of here now!" Lloyd went over to her to tug on her hand, but she stayed in place not facing him.

"Aeria...?"

"This is it Lloyd, the moment where I decide what's best in my heart, and it's telling me that I need to protect you guys and save those people down there." Aeria finally turned to face Lloyd, who was startled for a second by her uncovered dark eye.

"Aeria don't-" Lloyd's protest was cut off right as Aeria pulled him in to lightly kiss his cheek, making him freeze in one place as he took a moment to process what just happened.

"This time I'm not pushing you away out of fear... but because I care about you too much to let you get hurt..." Aeria lightly pushed him away while using her powers to whisk him out of there on a forcible stream of wind.

"No!" Lloyd's last plea was heard before he was pulled through the tunnel and deposited outside where the others were waiting for him and greeted him with a barrage of questions,

"What happened?"

"Where's Aeria?"

"Where is she?"

The others' voices blended into the background as Lloyd's mind tuned them out out of fear for what Aeria was about to do.


	30. Two Halves Reunited and Aftermath

3rd Person POV with Dark Aeria

After sending Lloyd out of harm's way, Dark Aeria flew up through the ceiling of the crumbling mountaintop and punched their way through solid stone to make it to the outside, where the blown-off top was crumbling down toward the city.

"We're gonna have to give this our all plus one!" Aeria shouted over the noise to her counterpart, to which she chuckled and spoke mentally,

 _ **Like anything else would be better?**_

Aeria smiled before holding both of her hands in front of her, taking a few seconds to gather up the emotions she would need to fuel her next move.

She thought of the rare moments Ronin actually mentored her in things other than thievery, training and fixing cars with Jeff, the moment she shared her inner feelings with Nya and Xia through her origami creations, every moment she had with Lloyd…

Purple energy gathered around her outstretched arms and created a barrier formed from pure, hardened wind, reinforced with streaks of darkness, as soon as the chunks of mountain hit it, they were forcibly dissolved into smaller bits of rock and gravel and blew away, harmless as dust in the wind.

From the base of the mountain, the ninja were able to make it back to the Destiny's Bounty after Misako had picked up on their situation and informed Wu to steer the ship toward them and planned to do the same with Aeria. Unfortunately, once they made it to the deck, a stray boulder was sent their way and severely damaged once of the thrusters, grounding them as they witnessed what happened next.

The aftershock on the impact sent a shockwave that knocked into Aeria with the intensity of an earthquake, knocking her unconscious as she was sent hurtling toward the ground.

"Aeria!" Lloyd's shout was heard all around as Aeria came closer to the ground, helpless as she remained out cold.

"You didn't think I'd completely leave her, did'ja?" A new voice sounded over the ship's intercoms much to everyone's surprise.

Just when it seemed she was done for, a red ship came out from nowhere and steered to the side to catch Aeria and steered toward the Bounty. When the ship came in close enough range, they could see it was Rex and the person who saved Aeria was none other than Ronin.

"Ronin!" Everyone cheered as Rex landed right next to the Bounty and they all ran toward them.

When the door opened, Aeria was barely awake with an arm around Ronin's shoulder as he helped her stand until Lloyd came forward and took her before hugging her.

"How did you-?" Jay's question was cut off as Ronin chuckled and told them,

"I've told ya before, I keep tabs on people of interest, Aeria pretty much fits that category."

"As your former mentee?" Wu questioned with a wise smile.

"Somethin' like that." Ronin crossed his arms with a light smirk.

"Thank you." Lloyd thanked him with genuine gratitude as he led Aeria away to the rooms to rest.

"You really do care for her..." Nya smiled from where she stood with Xia nodding in confirmation.

"Just call it payback for fixin' Rex."

Nya raised her eyebrow, expecting to hear more which made Ronin sigh and add,

"I practically partially raised her, I couldn't leave knowing she was in that much danger."

"Well you did us a service by saving one of our own." Misako thanked him before they were rejoined by Lloyd.

"She'll be up again in a little while if ya wanna stick around a little longer." Lloyd informed Ronin as he shook his head and commented,

"Nah, I better be goin', just tell her I'm glad she's alright." Ronin hopped on Rex and flew away, giving them a salute before taking off to the skies.

"Huh so I guess he's not totally heartless." Jay commented mildly.

"Not completely anyway." Cole added on.

"Well, I'd say we should look for Pythor, but I think we all know he's going underground until our next faceoff." Lloyd told the others before shrugging it off.

"Yeah, let's get somethin' to eat."

"Totally, I'm starving."

"Skylor's?"

"Of course."

Everyone walked away to get some food while Lloyd stayed on the deck to watch the sunset over Ninjago. As he leaned against the railing, he felt something hard within his gi pocket and, after some rummaging, he found the golden swirled mineral within one of his pockets.

 _She had complete faith that she wouldn't need it…_ Lloyd thought to himself as he held it up to catch the last rays of the sun before it completely sank behind the horizon.

"I'm just glad to have you back with us..." Lloyd whispered as he tossed the stone up before putting it back in his pocket to head back inside as Nya arrived with some bags of food.

"Uh I thought you just left to get food?" He questioned in confusion at the fast pickup.

"We field tested Aeria's new motorcycle features and they were working perfectly." Xia explained from where she was laying out plates for everyone.

"Come on, let's chow down!" Jay was about to dig in with Wu smacked his hand away with his chopsticks before saying,

"Not everyone has been seated yet." Looking over to Lloyd to get what he meant. Nodding, Lloyd went over to Aeria's room and knocked lightly before entering to find her already awake and stretching her arms up as if she just woke up only seconds before.

"Hey." She gave a little wave from where she was sitting before she got up.

"Hey… Aeria or…?" Lloyd trailed off and Aeria got what he meant answering,

"It's me Lloyd, Darkstorm and I worked out an agreement, she only gets to come out during real battles."

"Oh OK great..." Lloyd stayed in one place, but he nervously shifted his foot in place, looking like he needed to say something.

"Is there something you needed or..."

"I just wanted to talk about the…. you know..."

"The kiss?"

"Yeah...I mean u-unless you don't y'know want to-" Lloyd blushed dark red as he looked away in embarrassment before Aeria walked over and took one of his hands in hers.

"I would make up some excuse that I needed you distracted so you wouldn't argue against me going at it alone even after I said I never needed to but, truth be told, I didn't want my feelings to go unsaid if anything went sideways..." Aeria looked Lloyd in the eyes as she admitted that with genuine emotion clear in her voice.

"Oh O-OK..." Lloyd stuttered out before Aeria smirked and messed up his hair saying,

"Now what was it you were gonna tell me before the mush-fest started?"

Lloyd chuckled a bit at her sudden attitude change before answering,

"I was coming to see if you were feelin' up for some dinner?"

"Asking me out already are we?" Aeria joked but Lloyd's face once again flushed bright red before she side nudged him saying,

"I'm kidding, let's go join the others before they take all the good dumplings"

Lloyd sighed before following behind her to join the others as they celebrated the end of one disaster and the start of a brand new friendship with their newest team member; the Second Master of Wind and Darkness, the Violet Ninja.

The End


	31. Day of the Departed Epilogue

Aeria's POV

We were all sitting around the fire on the floating island of the Temple of the Airjitzu, letting our lanterns fly into the air when I felt a light breeze and heard a whisper,

 _Aeria…_

"Huh?" I got up and walked to the edge of the island. Using my night vision, I looked in the direction of Ninjago to the museum, where I spotted one last green colored lantern by the entrance.

"Aeria?" Lloyd noticed me getting up and came to my side while the others didn't notice.

"I have to go uh…" I trailed off motioning to the museum. He nodded silently to show he understood and asked,

"How're you going to get down there?"

"I have my ways." I smiled before falling backward off the island and using the wind to make me fly above the ground and off towards the museum.

 _A few minutes later..._

I had arrived at the museum and almost crashed into one of the support pillars, but managed to avoid impact, barely.

As I brushed myself off, I heard a laugh coming from inside the museum, so I ventured in through the broken-down door and made my way to the Hall of Villainy. All the statues of the villains had been destroyed when the others destroyed their foes' ghosts.

"Hey, Ari…" I heard from behind me. I turned around and saw my brother, Morro behind me, possessing his statue from before with the sword that had been in his hand on his back. For a few seconds, we just stood there, facing each other, not saying a word until the silence was broken with,

"You've grown up so much… I wish I could've been there for that."

"The ninja say it was because you were too busy trying to prove destiny wrong." I responded a bit coldly crossing my arms.

"Listen, I know you're mad at me for not finding you sooner but-" I interrupted him with a tackled hug, I held on tightly, afraid he'd slip away again and he hugged me back too.

"I missed you… everyday… and every day I was mad at myself for not being strong enough…" At this, Morro pulled me away and held my shoulders, looking me in the eye.

"Do not say that about yourself Ari, you _are_ strong enough. _I_ should've been a better brother and looked for you a bit longer before giving up."

I sniffled a bit before grabbing him into another right hug again that he returned.

"Ari… I've wanted to tell you that for so long… Ever since you were born..."

 _"Meet your little sister, Aeria." Young Morro was handed a little bundle wrapped in a purple blanket and, peeking out with wide black eyes and a strand of black hair streaked with a tiny bit of purple framing it, he saw his little sister's face._

 _"Hi there, I'm Morro."_

 _And the little girl smiled and giggled while reaching for her brother's face._

"From the moment you could walk…"

 _"Come on, walk to your brother." Their mother gently urged Aeria as she stumbled around on her feet trying to maneuver her way to her brother._

 _"Come on, you can make it." Morro urged her as he reached his arms out to her. When she did manage to toddle over to him, she wrapped her short arms around his neck and fell asleep within seconds as if those few steps had completely drained her energy._

 _"She must really love her brother." Their father commented as he stood behind his wife and they held hands with smiles on their faces, "At least we won't have to worry too much about you two fighting when you get older."_

 _"Not ever…" Morro whispered as he hugged his sister closer to him._

"Since before I promised I would always be there for you..."

 _"Wait up!" Young Aeria climbed up after her brother in a tree._

 _"Come on, slowpoke!" Morro teased her as he continued to climb up._

 _"I'm scared!" She cried out as she almost climbed onto a branch that had broken off and fallen out of the tree and she clung to the trunk._

 _"Almost there!" Morro climbed down to help his sister, "I got you." He assured her as they both climbed to the top of the tree._

 _"See! I told you the view up here would be amazing."_

 _"Woa-oh!" Aeria, in her amazement of the view, had leaned forward too much and almost fell off the branch had it not been for her brother's quick reflexes in grabbing the back of her shirt. Soon after she was scrabbling to get back onto the branch and, as soon as she was brought back up, she instantly grabbed onto her brother and he hugged her close._

 _"Shhhhhh sh shh shh it's alright I got you…" Morro comforted his sister as she started bawling from almost falling down again, "I'll always protect you, no matter what."_

 _"N-no m-matter what?" She stopped crying long enough to look up at her brother with large teary eyes._

 _"No matter what." He told her determinedly and he used his sleeve to wipe her eyes, making her smile up at him before she settled herself back onto the branch to continue watching the scenery below them._

"I knew you were going to be the best sister any brother could ask for, that you were going to do great things with your life, with or without me there..."

We stood in our hug for a few seconds longer before separating and I wiped my tears with my gi sleeve.

"OK that's enough crying for one night…" I laughed ruefully before getting back to the moment at hand, "Why are you still here? Wu told me you had gone back in here after you warned the others about Yang?"

"I was about to leave, when I remembered that I still had a debt to settle with you _and_ with him." Morro nodded his head to the entrance of the museum, where I saw a blonde head quickly duck out of sight.

"I know you're there, Lloyd." I called out and he came out from the pillar by the door, sheepishly rubbing the back of his neck.

"I'm sorry for eavesdropping, but I just had to make sure that Aeria was OK."

"I can't say that I blame you for being suspicious." Morro assured Lloyd as he walked over to the two.

"I would've appreciated a little heads up though so I could've flown with you here." I smiled at Lloyd before clasping his hand in mine and sitting him down next to me on one of the sitting areas in the museum.

"Are you two…?" My brother trailed off when he saw me and Lloyd's hands still holding.

"Uhhh…" Lloyd didn't know how to respond to that so I did,

"Yeah. It was him who took a chance on me when his team figured out that Pythor was trying to get to me for my powers."

"That snake!" Morro smacked his first down on the seating edge, making a few cracks splinter out from his fist, "And I let him get away unscathed."

"Hey, it's OK, _I'm_ OK." I assured him as I put my hand over his fist and he loosened it to hold my hand.

"I was so worried about you when he told me you were alive…"

"We figured you must've gone to find Cole when you didn't show up for his warning." Lloyd explained to me and I nodded before explaining,

"I felt a shift when my lantern turned green in the Howling Woods and had a hunch it had to do with Cole fading away, so I went to Yang's temple, where you guys told me he was turned into a ghost in the first place."

"You still remembered the woods?" Morro smiled softly.

"Yeah, took me a while to open it again, but I kept it all this time..."

"Remember when we dug it out of the trash when that guy got so frustrated with it and he only needed to move one more slide?" We both laughed before I added,

"Technically _I_ was the one to dive for it, but yeah." I pulled the box out of my jacket pocket and opened it to reveal all that was in it: the photo, the map, the pitch-black carved stone, and the small origami crane.

"Hey, what was the stone for?" Morro asked, pointing to it, "I don't remember putting that in there."

"According to Master Wu, it's a Chronostone, an enchanted obsidian carved with runes that are said to protect whoever holds it for one crucial moment in their lives." Lloyd explained before I added on.

"It transported me through time as a form of protection when I was about to be taken back to an orphanage I had been put in when I was taken from you."

"I guess losing you was just one thing that pushed me further into my rage…"

"The same rage that pulled you to want to take the Green Ninja name by force?" Lloyd asked carefully.

"Yes…" Morro looked away in shame before taking a deep, shuddering breath and asking us,

"Do you know why else I wanted to become the Green Ninja for?" Making us shake our heads at his question.

"When I heard about how the Green Ninja would be the one to save the Violet Ninja, I knew instantly that that was going to be you," Morro pointed to me, "and that maybe if _I_ were the Green Ninja, it would mean that I could finally find you, but it didn't really work out huh…?"

"Fate had different plans for me, like to become Darkstorm's vessel."

"I'm sorry, who?"

 _ **"Ree's talking about me."**_ Darkstorm's voice sounded from my mouth as my eyes darkened a bit to show her through.

"Woah!" Morro jumped back a little in shock before I returned to normal.

"I'm guessing that was her?"

"Yeah, she used to try to take me over, but we were able to come to an understanding; she only comes out partially during combat."

"And aside from being made of diluted Dark Matter, Storm's protective of Aeria and of the others, in her own way." Lloyd added in.

"I guess a lot's changed since I left the realm of the living…"

"I wish you could come back…"

"I know you do, but I made my choice a long time ago, it may have been the wrong one, but I'm glad you were given a chance to be better than I was." Morro placed a hand on my cheek and I leaned into it as I closed my tear-filled eyes.

From behind us, a faint light was seen growing on the horizon, signaling to us that dawn was approaching.

"The sun's gonna be coming up soon. I have to go." Morro pulled away and started to walk over to the pedestal where his statue went. Lloyd held my hand as they watched Morro get into position,

"I trust you'll watch over my sister, Lloyd?"

"To the end..." Lloyd gently squeezed my hand while smiling at me before my brother told me,

"When it's your time, I'll be waiting…" He raised his sword, gave us a wink and a smile, before the green glow around the statue faded, confirming that his spirit had left, hopefully in peace now.

"You OK?" Lloyd asked me as I sniffled and wiped a few stray tears away.

"Yeah, I'm just... glad I got to see him one last time..."

"Yeah… c'mon the others are probably wondering where we are by now." Lloyd and I walked out hand in hand as the new dawn started to rise on the horizon.


End file.
